geoscience in the media How much geoscience is in the news? Information on the level of coverage gained by different disciplines is hard to find, and much existing research is out of date. Calls from UK journalists received at the Media Resource Service run by the Novartis Foundation in London between 1985 (when the MRS was launched) and December 1998, broke down as follows (in percentages): health and medicine; 39.2; psychology and social sciences; 13.6; life sciences: 10.6; environment: 4.2; physical sciences: 5.6; industry: 3.1; space and military: 2.3; Earth sciences: 1.8; energy: 1.1; other: 18.1. (Source: Media Research Service)

The Novartis Foundation's MRS responds to unprompted inquiries from journalists. Experience of operating a similar system for putting journalists in touch with UK university experts has shown that the motivation for such enquiries comes from items that are in the news in any case, on which the journalist wants expert comment. This gives enquiries a distinct news-desk bias, greatly favouring direct human-interest subjects such as medicine, biology, and the social sciences.

Patterns of coverage have undoubtedly changed since 1989, when Anders Hansen (University of Leicester) analysed the UK national press and found that Earth science accounted for only 0.8 per cent of total coverage over its two-month sample. Interest in environmental change, which has brought increased interest in natural hazards of all kinds, including those within the realm of classical geology, has shifted the emphasis of science coverage. Also, the limits of Earth science have broadened out as classical geology (the science of things you can hit with a hammer) has become part of what is now seen as ‘Earth system science’.

The general impression is that, taking in dinosaurs, earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural hazards like tsunamis whose cause is geological, Earth science often commands much more than 0.8 per cent or 1.8 per cent of science coverage. For example, during the 1998 week-long meeting of the British Association Meeting (the UK equivalent of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), geological stories commanded about 30 per cent of all the science news generated (counting column centimetres). This would be a considerable proportion for any discipline, but it is vast when one realizes that Earth science made up only about 5 to 8 per cent of the total programme.

Science journalists are aware of the huge public interest in aspects of geoscience, and are eager to write about it when it is available. Outside the major sciencefests like the BAAS and AAAS, however, levels of coverage slide back because there are fewer people pushing the stories. Earth science is mostly small-scale and dispersed, whereas big science and medicine have bigger, more cash-rich installations with more money to devote to telling the world how worthwhile they are. As high consumers of public money, it is very much in their interests to do this.

Fortunately not all sciences are equal in press terms. Volcanoes and dinosaurs are inherently more accessible than subatomic particles. This is why geoscience punches above weight once a suitable story comes to be promoted. Experience at the Geological Society of London in placing geological stories has been a happy 100 per cent record of success (at the time of writing!). In two years, not one story that the Society has attempted to promote from its publications and conferences has failed to gain coverage. The constraint on the process is the availability of suitable material.

Geoscientists, like most scientists and many other committed professionals, think that the media give them a raw deal. Those with experience of the press often find it unnerving because careful scientific caveats are left out, and the story may develop a headline of which they disapprove. Scientists who have worked with press officers and been successful are often discouraged by the time and effort required.

Many scientists of all disciplines want to be in the media spotlight, but want to be there only on their own terms. Their failure to get in on those terms generates much futile chagrin. Scientists believe that the media are in the education business, but the truth is that they are part of the entertainment industry. This misapprehension is especially strong in the UK, where the spirit of Lord Reith, the redoubtable first Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, still walks abroad (at least among highbrow consumers).

For these reasons much misguided effort is expended by scientific groups in asking how those in the media might change their ways to suit science better and give it a better press. This is not likely to succeed. The true road to greater coverage lies through providing the media with what they want. Improving the quality of coverage (which most scientists think necessary) will come about only through the diligent cultivation of professional press relations, and through more scientists learning to be journalists.

Documentary TV programmes

Like those working in other media, TV producers have generally looked to the more sinister aspects of the Earth's behaviour to provide material for documentary programmes. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and tornadoes are undeniably photogenic and awe-inspiring; climatic change and other threats to the environment, if less immediately dramatic, also pose obvious threats to life and property and can thus gain the viewers' attention.

A wider interest in the Earth sciences has more recently been evident in British television and radio programmes. In 1998, for example, BBC TV put out two geological series. The flagship was Earth Story, broadcast on Sunday evenings in eight parts. This was a lavish, presenter-led documentary of the old school, reminiscent of those ‘voyages of personal discovery’ exemplified by Kenneth Clarke's Civilization and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. Aubrey Manning, a retired professor of natural history from Edinburgh, was an inspired choice to front the series. Not being a geologist allowed him to play the role of explorer, newly returned from an expedition to the land of the geologists, eager to introduce the world to the wonders he had found there. David Sington was the producer for Earth Story; Simon Lamb of the University of Oxford was the series consultant.

Series consultants are the relatively unsung heroes of TV documentaries. Anna Grayson fulfilled this role, and that of presenter, in the BBC's other 1998 TV geology series, The Essential Guide to Rocks. This was an attempt to present Earth science to young people, and unlike Earth Story it was aimed at those with short attention spans. Each 30-minute programme was in magazine format with four slots, each a self-contained story. There was no attempt here to create a structured course, although this was done in the book accompanying the series. The presenters for The Essential Guide to Rocks were Ray Mears (a survival expert, chosen, it seems, for high recognition with the target audience), Duncan Kopp (a geologist and also series researcher), and Kate Humble, who, like Professor Manning, took the role of the perpetually amazed ingénue: ‘Being down in a deep mine in Wales and finding real gold made me feel like I was an excited ten-year-old again’, she said.

In 1999 the BBC World Service broadcast a series entitled Earthworks for its massive 50 million audience. This series of 12- to 15-minute programmes traced the entire history of the Earth, from Big Bang to eventual supernova destruction. The producer was Merilyn Harris and the presenter (again) Anna Grayson. Many geologists were called upon for help in producing the series. Anna Grayson commented, ‘None of this could have been achieved without all the scientists who have been so helpful, polite, and have given up their time to communicate to wider public.’ An encouraging postscript to this story is that both Simon Lamb (Earth Story) and Anna Grayson (Essential Guide) subsequently won media prizes for their work.

Geoscientists in films and television

Most people make their minds up about others very quickly. Stereotyping is easy and comfortable. It confirms prejudices and saves time. It is also, as Stephen Jay Gould reminds us, ‘untrue, but culturally powerful’. Scientist characters in Hollywood films demonstrate, however, that fundamental changes are taking place in those stereotypes, with geoscientists leading the way. These changes are significant because they mark a changing attitude to science among the public.

In drama, time is of the essence. Characters must be established quickly with the audience. Quick, easy images are the stuff of TV news, advertising, and public relations. Stories must be tellable in quick, simple images. In film portrayals of scientists, we see what screenwriters believe will be recognizable by a mass audience. To those interested in the image of scientists, progress would consist of a change in this stereotype. This is what is happening.

The sexy, dashing whip-wielding archaeologist Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, is based on a real-life character: the palaeontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, discoverer of the dinosaur Oviraptor. Indiana Jones is unusual in portraying the academic as action-man. Hitherto, we were much more familiar with the egghead—scientist or not—as an arrogant, unworldly, megalomaniac obsessive (with a beautiful daughter to provide romantic interest for the hero action-man). This ancient dramatic tableau can be traced back to The Tempest and probably beyond. But with Indiana Jones we saw the beginning of a reaction. Increasing audience sophistication is part of the reason.

The screenwriter's challenge is to take recognizable character traits that might be a cliché elsewhere, and transplant them on to figures in the plot who would not normally be expected to display them.

Spielberg's Jurassic Park presents three principal scientists: Jeff Goldblum's theoretical mathematician, Sam Neil's vertebrate palaeontologist, and Laura Derne's palaeobotanist. All the main scientist characters in this picture come over well. Derne is strong-willed, independent, feminist and sexy. She is everything, in fact, because she also wants marriage and children. Neil is dedicated—perhaps a bit too educated—but is also intuitive, a superb communicator, and, above all, knowledgeable about dinosaurs, Goldblum is weird, roguish, and cool.

These characters have failings, but these are not numerous and do not include the old stereotypes of arrogance, selfishness, greed, or malevolence. Those traits are reserved for Attenborough, the aggrieved computer nerd on his staff, and the hateful accountant.

Geoscientists-as-saviours appeared in the 1997 volcano movie, Dante's Peak (Universal Pictures). In classic Jaws format, the film opens with a cosy community about to get the shock of its life from the Force of Nature on its doorstep: in this case, a large volcano in the Cascade Mountains of the western USA. The vested business interests and the local council, with the exception of feisty single mum Mayoress ( Linda Hamilton), conspire to prevent the necessary action being taken until it is too late.

To the rescue comes the US Geological Survey in the form of a geologist, Harry Dalton ( Pierce Brosnan). At this point we understand why the mayoral character has to be a single female. Intuition, with which Dalton is richly endowed, quickly tells him that the time for careful surveys is past. He is about to arrange an evacuation when his boss arrives. He, Paul Dreyfus ( Charles Hallahan), is thoughtful and cautious.

Dreyfus is distressed that his impetuous subordinate is about to panic the natives on little more evidence than his senses and a few asphyxiated squirrels. A bad experience, years ago when he too was young and impetuous (but not, we suspect, as handsome as Mr Brosnan), urges him to caution. He is right, of course; but Brosnan is righter.

The drama unfolds as one would expect. Brosnan is vindicated. The citizens are evacuated just in time. Paul Dreyfus, despite being man enough to admit his error, pays the ultimate penalty, as is dramatically right. Brosnan and Mayoress survive by hiding in a mine, and all ends as it should.

This is a very encouraging film for geoscientists. The young, pretty, student-like whizz-kids who work for crusty, overweight Paul are bright and attractive. Paul is hamstrung by protocol and procedures. He isn't In Touch With The Earth; but he is neither evil nor incompetent, and admits his mistake manfully. Conversely, Harvey Dalton uses his senses. He tastes things. He feels for the flora and fauna. These empathic traits are the anti-cliché devices that the scriptwriters have attached to him. He is also extremely handsome. Gorgeous, athletic scientists are undoubtedly a novelty.

The public has become better informed about science. One of the results is an increasing awareness of the difference between science and technology. From Mary Shelley on, tampering with Nature has always been a major theme in science fiction. As we move into the next century, however, the public is shifting its view. Scientists can be cool and brilliant, in touch with their feelings and brim-full of ‘emotional intelligence’. Villains are now much more likely to be the money- or power-mad, or those who thoughtlessly apply science. The heat seems to have come off those who are merely curious about Nature's workings.

This explains why geoscientists are in the vanguard. Geoscientists can more easily be cast as sensitive seers than physicists, chemists, or geneticists. Moreover, by being associated with the open air and fieldwork, they can take on some of the clichéd but healthy characteristics usually associated on film with oilmen and lumberjacks.

The battle for the rehabilitation of science in the public mind is not over. But these new fictional representations of science and its practitioners show us that it has moved into a distinctly new phase.

The people in the media

Many first-rate science journalists are not scientifically trained, but few would disagree that first-hand knowledge of science's methods and culture is a great help. Competition in journalism is intense, and so the ability to specialize provides the aspiring reporter with a distinct advantage. A degree in geoscience provides an ideal background for a science journalist: the study of the Earth brings all the sciences together, giving the graduate an unusually broad education.

The traditional route into newspaper journalism has been to start as a junior on local papers taking professional qualifications along the way, like an apprentice. Most science journalists tend, however, to be recruited from specialist journals.

Many science journalists work independently. They either go freelance after a period as ‘staffers’, or begin writing as a sideline to their main occupation, gradually allowing their journalistic work to grow until it can provide them with a living. With recent developments in IT and communications, working from home is increasingly attractive.

Ted Nield

Bibliography

Pollock, J. and and Steven, D. (1997) Now for the science bit— concentrate! Communicating science. River Path Associates, 5 Old Road, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 1EJ.
Scanlon, E., Whitelegg, E., and Yates, S. (eds) (1999) Communicating science: Reader 2: contexts and channels. Routledge, London.
Anon. (1997) So you want to be a science writer? (2nd edn). Association of British Science Writers, 23 Savile Row, London W1X 2NB.