Why news and money-making don't mix

A fascinating piece on the struggles of CNN to maintain audience and objectivity in the face of partisan volleys from Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. 

“There are several networks that reside in the cable news category, but only one that reliably delivers the news unbiased,” said Jon Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic network. “We would do ourselves a disservice if we thought that our main competitors were the other so-called cable news networks. They don’t have journalists on in prime time.”

...But [a] veteran CNN correspondent suggested that prime time might demand something more: “It’s not sexy to be in the middle. Klein’s got to make it sexy.”

The slow erosion of science news

The death of print newspapers hasn't just meant the loss of quality journalists, but also the loss of science reporting.  And that's particularly important in the United States.

Before discussing the highlights, let's consider the context. Truth is that the United States never has been a wellspring of scientific knowledge, even given its great achievements in that regard.

We wring our hands over low math and science test scores, but few adults bother themselves with the details. We get steamed over the politics of stem cells and global warming, but few voters know even the basics of cellular development and carbon emissions.

Read more at the original piece on Minnpost, and try your hand at the basic science knowledge quiz.  

Your health news lacks good journalism

Tip of the hat to Minnpost for its story on health news journalism and a new website that helps rank health stories based on their willingness to engage some healthy skepticism of their sources.  Many of the doctors that provide quotes and opinions for medical stories are given a lot of money by pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers. 

Check your sources!

Iran: how many rationing riots? Check your sources

I blogged about Iran's energy policy a while back, and noted that their fuel subsidy was likely to run into a wall of government deficits sometime soon. That happened this week, when the government announced gasoline rationing (note: a market price also rations things, by making people pay what the item is actually worth). The BBC has a nice Q&A on the rationing policy and rationale. The interesting part isn't the rationing, or even the widespread protests. It's more in the fact that the news stories vary A LOT in their selection of the number of gas stations that protesters supposedly burned.

Yesterday, it wasn't uncommon to see a news source cite 50 or 100 gas stations. This figure seems to originate with at least one Iranian resistance group, whose website cites "at least 50 stations burned." The Seattle Times still says "more than a dozen, while the venerable New York Times cites "at least two" gas stations. CNN confirms exactly two.

Why the discrepancy?

Clearly, some folks just head to the internet, and have no idea if their source is legitimate. But there's also not a lot of Americans who get foreign news from someone actually in a foreign locale. The Christian Science Monitor noted in February that the number of foreign correspondents by both television and newspaper news outlets has been dropping steadily, even as foreign affairs has become more important since 9/11. The original paper, from the Harvard Shorenstein Center, goes into more detail about the dearth of foreign news (pdf).

If we want good international news, we need good journalists overseas.