When confronted with the truth, a prominent science journalist claimed that facts don't matter in op-eds. Science journalism is dead.
journalism
Facebook, a site from which a substantial number of people acquire their daily news, has decided that pages that post fake stories will be banned from advertising. That's a perfectly fine decision, but it raises a bigger and more profound question: Who decides which news is fake? Mark Zuckerberg?
To make our society better informed, we have to fight back against the Fear Industry. We can do so by publicly identifying those people who spread misinformation. And then we encourage people to never listen to them again.
To stay in business, media outlets need viewers. So they give readers what they want, which apparently consists largely of pointless political bickering, epic acts of stupidity and naked people.
Sometimes general assignment reporters are asked to cover complex science and health stories, which produces an entirely predictable product: Articles that are nothing more than rehashed press releases, topped with click-bait headlines based on misunderstandings of the original research. And here are some other ways it happens.
2016 was a year to forget. A rough-and-tumble election, partisan rhetoric and "fake news," and the loss of many beloved and talented people -- from Prince to Carrie Fisher -- made this calendar cycle a bit more difficult than most. Surely, 2017 must have something better in store.
To ensure that it does, we all must resolve to make it so. And as a science journalist, I can do my part by adopting these four resolutions. I hope other journalists join me.
Facebook may be overtly partisan and secretly conspiratorial, but companies have the freedom to do that. The only thing that will absolve Facebook of blame is if government seeks to regulate them.
The world of journalism and science are interwoven which has led David Corcoran, the editor of the New York Times' weekly science section has compiled 125 of the most exciting and riveting scientific stories in the "Book of Science: More than 150 Years of Groundbreaking Scientific Coverage."