Disingenuous, or just Stupid? With TV journos, you never can tell.

One of the points I have to make--repeatedly--to folks here in academia who are going to interact with media, is that it pays to know who you're dealing with.  In a general sense, it means that if you're being interviewed for a print publication versus TV, the print reporter is probably going to have more time to get it right, and will most likely be someone whose entire job consists of covering the topic that you're being interviewed about.

Of course, since no NC publication employs a science beat reporter anymore this is a tad misleading, but let's just move on.

Whereas with TV journalists, their prep time for a story tends to go something like this:

Desk:  Hey!  There's a thing with a dog at the university!  Get the story!

TV Journo:  Umm, what?

Desk:  Here's the press release.  It's in 15 minutes!  Go!

So generally speaking, when I do media training for academics, I tell them that TV reporters are usually less prepared than their print counterparts.  I do this primarily so that the academic will not get shirty with the reporter on camera when said reporter has not familiarized him-or-herself with the academic's entire ouvre.  Sometimes this backfires, and instead of a prickly professor, you get someone treating the reporter like a sweet but slow child, but most of the time, you can avoid unnecessary unpleasantness by just bearing in mind that nine times out of ten, TV folks aren't real clear about what's happening--particularly if it's science related.

But then, sometimes you get the TV journalist who embodies the stereotype of the Evil Agenda-Having Reporter, who already HAS the story, thank you very much, and would prefer that you egghead types limit your quotes to those that fit the narrative.

And it's harder to tell them apart than you may think, which leads me to the point of this post.

Last night I was watching the local news, which was doing the obligatory embryonic stem cell story, wherein apparently all science has been freed from the dark ages by a strike of Saint O's pen and some blithe handwaving over all that "ethical" stuff.  Perhaps it's above his pay grade.

Anyway.  The reporter introduced the topic, then brought on the Dying Baby Who Can Be Saved By Stem Cell Research--except that the stem cells involved in saving the baby came from umbilical cord blood, not embryonic research.  Well, okay.  Hurray for saving the baby and stuff! 

The you had the obligatory researcher talking about how embryonic research will cure every other disease ever, because those cells can become every other cell.  Yes, and the Japanese figured out in 2007 that so can adult harvested stem cells.  But whatever. The piece ends on the obligatory "stem cell research, yay!" but never got into the fact that lives are also being saved by using ethically "clean" stem cell research, and tends to conflate all stem cell research with embryonic research.

I was puzzled.  The reporter merely mentioned that the stem cells being used were umbilical in passing, but neglected to make the obvious connections - which were that stem cell research can and did continue sans embryos, it was apparently successful, and that scientists haven't been sitting around twiddling their thumbs for eight years, all, "Oh noes!  The federal government won't give me money for embryos!  No more research for me, I guess!"

So I was left to wonder - disingenuous, or stupid?

You make the call.