Research among experienced environmental journalists reveals a shift since 2000 in their view of "balance," as an element of objectivity. They now advocate a "weight of evidence" approach where stories reflect scientific consensus.
Russell, Clifford S. (author), Schiller, Andrew (author), Hunsaker, Carolyn T. (author), Kane, Michael A. (author), Wolfe, Amy K. (author), Dale, Virginia H. (author), Suter, Glenn W (author), Pion, Georgine (author), Jensen, Molly H. (author), and Konar, Victoria C. (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 175 Document Number: C29927
Authors follow the notion that ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge, but rather has its own configurations. They use examples to illustrate how interest groups and news media "appropriate and emphasize those ignorance claims that advance and protect their own particular concerns." Examples include Alar pesticide and tobacco.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 144 Document Number: C22556
Notes:
Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture, conference of the National Association of Science Writers, University of Tennessee, March 17, 1997. 8 pages., "If science was ever a thing apart, a special way of living and of seeing things, that time is past. Today, science is the vital principle of our civilization. To do science is critical, to defend it the kernel of political realism. To define it in words is to be, quite simply, a writer, working the historical mainstream of literature."
