To Educate or Inform is a Decision to Behold

by Andrew McGregor

There is a school of though that in order to learn one needs to suffer with a text book. 

An interesting debate going on about the difference between informing the public and educating them.  Whatever its grumblings, science journalism does fill the role of educator to the public and not just informer, and it is not journalism in the ‘man bites dog’ sense of daily reporting on humanity’s failures.  Also, communal complaint at this conference has been the inexorable justifying of science journalism’s existence to editors.

What the future multi-media components can do is to evoke that childhood sense of wonder shared by the sports pages.  The sensation when one first sees an eclipse or imagines what it would be like to win the Super Bowl.  This is all interesting because it is making news a videogame experience.  Want to learn about how Tsunami’s work? Well, here’s a video simulation of what Malibu will look like underwater.

I personally grew up playing Sim Earth, Sim City and Sim Ant and I think that these videogames greatly enhanced my intellectual life.  For example, Sim Earth had a detailed explanation of the nitrogen cycle one could read before using it on a planetary scale.

In this example the visual and interactive experience fused to provide something wholly worthwhile, informative, and educational.

In terms of journalism, well...there is already a problem with the use of graphics as the major networks happily paraded representations of high-end US military technology before and during the current Iraq War.  The same thing happened when North Korea declared a successful nuclear test: hundreds of computer-animated depictions of ICBM’s streaking towards America from Asia popped up online and on television.

In both cases the rubric of accuracy implicit in journalism was sacrificed for the benefit of a visual illustration.  The current War in Iraq was not going to be decided because of high-tech considerations and North Korea cannot currently send a missile across the ocean.  In both cases the graphics distorted what the real concerns with both of these stories were and are.

So, in terms of science reporting, the interactive element can be very beneficial when a younger version of me is playing Sim Ant and managing my own colony and doing these kinds of things.  Yet, there are going to be problems with scientific coverage that also have policy ramifications.  A graphic illustration has no wiggle room, so in terms of science coverage with political consequences it is likely going to say nothing and be inoffensive to everyone or be completely accurate and offend a certain percentage of the population...or be completely inaccurate but very viewable.

Still, if journalists can maintain their integrity and fruitfully collaborate with scientists the internet’s ability to indefinitely display an interactive science feature and allow for limitless amounts of text could allow for the best of both fields in a shared world.