5th World Conference of Science Journalists

 How to make a big story bigger [77:34m]: Download

PRODUCER: Emma Young

CHAIR: Bob McDonald

SPEAKERS: Fiona Fox, Kim Griggs, Amy Forbes

SESSION REPORT: Get it onto page one

By Boonsri Dickinson

Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks (Canada) opened this fast-paced session by describing how making a story bigger doesn’t mean you have to sensationalize it. Describing how the hobbits story changed from a mere discovery of fossils found on the remote Indonesian island of Flores to scientific debate over if the fossils were really a new species of humans to a controversy over who owns the fossils. “Now that’s sensationalism. We are not talking about that today,” McDonald says.

When Fiona Fox, Science Media Centre (UK), was told that she had three years to land third-world debt on the front page, she made the story bigger by getting the church involved. After Fox had 20 catholic bishops play tug of war to symbolize debt, three major newspapers had third-world debt on the front page.

Fox’s five tips for making a story bigger:
1. Link to topical picture of the day – SARS or global warming
2. Speak out in numbers – use 5 institutions instead of 5 scientists
3. Be an opportunist – “Any sting ray experts, you had your moment.”
4. Take the journalist to the story – “Day trip to an exotic location, like this.”
5. Embrace celebrities.

Now, at Science Media Centre, Fox says getting Dengue Fever and Malaria on the front page is “just as difficult” as getting third-world debt in the paper.

Kim Griggs, freelance science writer in New Zealand, has to make stories bigger “to make a living.”

The green fat nocturnal parrot — Kakapo — sold well. In one trip, Griggs sold the Kakapo story to COSMOS magazine for a feature, to the BBC by interviewing UK volunteers, and to New Scientist for artificial insemination. Though the real reason to pursue stories like the Kakapo is to hold one of the six Kakapos in her hand, Griggs says.

Griggs gave out some handy advice: develop relationships with editors and exploit resources such as list serves. Most importantly, show your credentials by creating a Web site.

A journalism lecturer at Monash University, Amy Forbes, had her start as a science journalist in the Philippines. Forbes stated clearly that “science journalism is not a big thing in the Philippines,” where most newspapers have no dedicated science page.

Forbes described how early coverage of the possibility of Pinatubo erupting, months before it actually erupted, helped save at least 5,000 lives.

Forbes warned reporters to keep away from wacky science stories and instead to personalize stories. Forbes ends on a light notes, the Philippines are full of epidemics according to the media, but the country has something better — not all the stories are tragic.

During question and answer session, all the speakers agreed that as a journalist, you’ll have to do things that make you uncomfortable. The key to making a story bigger (in terms of longevity) — is a timely news hook. It’s a mystery why some headlines stay in the news for weeks, while a briefing on the AIDs vaccine will only be a one hit wonder.

Front-page news is not the only way to get the news out, try magazine features and documentaries. As for tips for dealing with skeptics — well, the media is “allergic to closing down debates.”

PRODUCER: Chee Chee Leung

CHAIR: Robin Marantz Henig

SPEAKERS: Geoff Carr, Mal Washer, Janet Salisbury, Peter Mountford

SESSION REPORT: Stem cell research: The debate rages

by Robert Frederick

From Plato’s Euthyphro to UNESCO’s Universal Ethics Project, ethicists have failed to define a universal ethic. Unsurprisingly, today’s discussion on the ethics of stem cells would have suffered that same fate. That’s because the controversy itself is not universal, as one Korean delegate stood to say.

But the task of the Stem cells and bioethics session was not to define a universal ethic for how to use stem cells, it was to describe the controversy surrounding their use. And that controversy in some countries — described by panelists as “Western” or “Christian-founded” countries — made for a lively discussion as moderated by U.S. freelancer Robin Marantz Henig.

U.K. businessman Peter Mountford of Stem Cell Sciences argued for open policies that allowed as many scientists as possible to pursue the nascent science because scientists are still “trying to understand what’s normal” among stem cells.

Medical doctor and Member of the Australian Parliament Mal Washer pushed back against Henig’s concern that swapping terms was important. He said that changing from “embryonic stem cell” to “blastocyst” this late in the discussion, for example, would cost him dearly in constituents’ trust, a democratic politician’s most important currency.

Janet Salisbury, doctor of cell biology and founder of Australia’s Biotext consulting firm, stressed that journalists should not assume ignorance of one’s audience or interviewees about the underlying science. “People do inform themselves very well,” she cautioned, even of highly technical matters.

And The Economist’s U.K. science editor Geoff Carr summarized advice for science journalists that all panelists agreed to: arguing the benefits of stem-cell research “is a surrogate for a different [ethical] argument.” Carr urged the audience of about one hundred delegates not to make that substitution, or allow others to do so, but focus on the ethical issues themselves.

 Spreading science through societies by reaching women and children [90:59m]: Download

PRODUCER: Cathy Reade

CHAIR: Rosemary Okello-Orlale

SPEAKERS: Annmaree O’Keeffe, Jacqueline Ashby, Subbiah Arunachalam

SESSION REPORT: Empowering rural women farmers with science—key to achieving food security

by Imelda V. Abano

In many parts of the world, it is the women who are responsible for food security, yet rural women farmers have little access to the benefits of research and innovation, said Jacqueline Ashby, a development sociologist and presently the Director of the Rural Innovation Institute at the Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia.

Professor Ashby said that 80 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion poor depend on agriculture for their survival and that rural women in developing countries play critical roles in guaranteeing food security and well-being for the entire community.

“Empowering women in most developing countries with science is key to achieving food security. We should communicate with them on what new plant varieties and new technology is being developed in order for them to improve their crop production,” Prof. Ashby said.

To help the rural women farmers in the developing countries, Prof. Ashby said that a new strategy is now being introduced — the participatory plant breeding (PPB).

PPB has been proposed as a way to address three problems of conventional plant breeding, namely its low effectiveness in marginal environments, the long time needed to develop a variety and the poor level of adoption, particularly in developing countries.

“Although it is difficult to introduce this new technology to women farmers in the developing countries we are determined to help them and so we partner with several organizations,” she said.

There are currently more than 80 programs worldwide using PPB in a number of different countries and crops. These countries are in Syria, Jordan, Eritrea and Egypt on barley, durum wheat, bread wheat, lentil and chickpea. The first varieties identified through PPB are already in farmers’ fields in Syria, Egypt, Eritrea and Yemen. Other countries such as Jordan and Eritrea are increasingly using PPB as their national breeding strategy.