In Killingsworth and Palmer's article "Transformations of Scientific Discourse in New Media," they say purveyors of the media and news reporters commitment to epistemology (and to the truth really) is ostensible (133). They are concerned with creating a story for the purpose of engaging their audiences. This is how they spark human interest, which is apparently the most lucrative (let's be real, corporations only care about making money, so this is what works) way to offer their services.
Scientific news is dictated to the public according to it's information value. It being new and unknown is one part of that, and it also must spark human interest, such as the ever-controversial global warming issue. Magazines in the unusually hot summer of 1988 published articles about global warming because of it's relevance at the time(140). They addressed something that people were curious about. There was a demand for a service--a branch within the market if you will. The point is, human interest dictates all reporting and the presentation of all media. The mass media report whatever will be viewed or read, therefore they simple can't report dry, boring things within the world of science that don't ignite human interest. They are forced to report "the popular image of science" (141). "Reporters in Science magazine routinely ignore the general public's taste for dramatic constructions..." (145), while Time magazine is one of the most widely circulated and chooses to acknowledge the pulic's "taste for dramatic constructions"
In Fahnestock and Secor's article, “The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument,” they say the lower stases, fact, definition, and cause are practiced most in the scientific world while value and action, higher stases make up most the primary approaches to literary discourse (430). Basically, the old rhetorical method of analysis through stases is still useful. Scientific discourse in the news media must strike a balance between using lower and higher stases--the lower out of necessity of the nature of the content, and higher out of the exigence in consideration of the intended audience, which are in this case, vastly laymen. Typically, the media compromises and reports science news using the higher stases in some way in an effort toward consistency and to retain human interest in their overall broadcast or publication.
Mass media journalists depend a lot on interviews and second sources of information, or just wherever they can get the fullest or most interesting telling of the events, whereas scientific writing is (or is at least meant to be--even if it's being reported on television)(Killingsworth, Palmer 133). This distinction alone seems to challenge the validity of mass journalism on a fundamental level. The question I have to pose about this is: shouldn't news corporations offer the sources of their information more readily? What effect would that have on the business aspect of the reporting world as suddenly the quality of each of the providers of the news were suddenly brought into question? I think a validated, trusted few networks whom people may begin to depend on (although I'm sure the rest would scramble to salvage their reputations) would rise to or retain prominence. I suppose falsifying sources would become more commonplace. One prime example of news reporting failure was Fox News' declaration of George W. Bush winning the popular vote prematurely. It was later revealed that Al Gore indeed won the popular vote. How could they have proven their claim? Shouldn't that be the norm? Of course it should. Is all of this plausible? With increasingly capable and interactive forms of media, I hope to see the day where everything stated as a fact may be traced to it's source by the viewer.
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