Page "Journalism ethics and standards" Paragraph 48

Because science deals largely with accepted facts or scientific consensus, it can illuminate some of the common complaints leveled at journalistic standards and practices.

For example, in the common tendency in the name of fairness, to seek out and equally report " both sides of the story ," it would be ludicrous spending equal time reporting the " flat Earth " argument when ever a " spherical Earth " was assumed.

Not so much, in say ; society, culture, or politics, where it's easy for the apathetic or uninformed to pretend everything is " soft ," mere, or unreal opinion.

Likewise, the common practice to without discrimination, publish " Average Joe's " highly opinionated opinion on the cause of something, ( such as a flood ) simply because he's standing by the side of the flood observing it.

But in fact the cause is probably technical, and may have great economic and political import, — as will the published article within the realm of public opinion.

It is sometimes claimed that some publishers do not want expert reporters because they cannot-be / are-not objective in their reporting.

Critics argue this definition of objective actually means " ignorant.

" In science, as noted above, where one opinion is NOT as good as any other as we pretend in politics and various other social arenas, this seems particularly silly.

Science itself has rules ( such as scientific consensus and peer review ) so it is not uselessly chasing every low-merit hypothesis coming from countless megaphones.

Some of these values are explained in Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and by Carl Popper, etc.

and are likely to be adopted by some science writers.

For all these and related reasons, science reporting may be on some leading edges of journalism.