alexlockwood.net

News sites and the Associated Press in America are being criticized by a leading climate blog for failing to check the veracity of a report that was pushed in a press release last week, claiming that earthquakes are linked to global warming.

Did you miss it? This story was published on:

• Yahoo Biz
• Investigate Express.co.uk
• MSNBC
• Free Republic (grass roots conservatism)
• Ad Hoc News (says it all…)

Erm. That’s about it. Thanks to RyanM on the Climate Audit site, Sans Pretence, the comments on Pat Dollard, and Wesley Smith for picking up on the news items. As Wesley says, “Does anybody do any fact checking anymore? Or are the words “scientific study” on a press release all that it takes to make the news?” (filed under: Stupidity in Media). The story was picked up by a number of other climate and political blogs, many of which are providing normally excellent citizen journalism, and, as such, (e.g. Deprogram your mind) quickly removed.

So where’d they get the story?

The key press releases came from AP and Marketwire. Both need their protocols checked. (Marketwire is Canadian owned, but operating out of the US and UK.)

The ’scientific’ paper itself, by Tom Chalko, was published in the online journal NUJournal. It doesn’t look peer-reviewed. Published by Natural University(?). One volume a year, with only one article a year, by Tom Chalko. Editorial board? Three people, including (drum roll….) Tom Chalko.

The idea of churnalism
This story is all about churnalism. It’s not clear whether or not journalist Nick Davies coined the term ‘churnalism’ or, aptly, just recycled it. But the phenomena which his book Flat Earth News describes–that journalists are forced to churn out stories to meet ever tighter deadlines with ever less reporting resources–is, as a few of the above sites show, an important issue.

So big well done to the UK press
Thankfully, a search of the UK Lexis-Nexis database indicates that it wasn’t picked up by any of the UK press. But the problem is–it came from AP.

One aspect of Davies’ criticism, which highlights the importance of this point, looked at the way in which the newswires, in particular the British Press Agency, the Press Association, are viewed as trusted sources that do not need a second source to corroborate. Nick borrowed the time of Cardiff’s postgrad journalism students to analyse two weeks’ worth of press:

They found that a massive 60 per cent of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, and a further 20 per cent contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR to which more or less other material had been added. With 8 per cent of the stories, they were unable to be sure about their source. That left only 12 per cent of stories where the researchers could say that all the material was generated by the reporters themselves.

It’s too easy for news organisations to trust what’s given to them by the wires, and to simply publish it, in some cases (MSNBC) verbatim. This gets out, and then someone, somewhere, reads it, believes it, and a wave of dissonance with actual science begins anew. Luckily journalists are still often too smart for this. But when under pressure, deadlines looming, and when not trained properly, new, thinking about heading home…

Final word
So, roll call of honour:

• UK journalists, well done.
• Climate bloggers, well done.

Roll call of shame:

• AP and Marketwire, this is bad, bad practice
• MSNBC, you’re down there with Ad-Hoc News and the other bin ends of the press

The wires need to A) think hard about their science reporting, and B) journalists need to check every wire story. But, as Davies’ book points out, he’s pessimistic that either of these two things will happen. The financial driver of news agencies and news publishers are the key forces, and both journalists and wire services are going to be further pinched for the foreseeable future.

The book is worth reading. This is probably the best review of it I’ve read, by John Lanchester in the London Review of Books.