The Scoop on Science Journalism

Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology. Dorothy Nelkin. W.H. Freeman, New York, 1987. 182 pp. $16.95. In Selling Science, Dorothy Nelkin—author of books on such topics as intellectual property and technological risk—tells the reader almost everything he or she might want to know about the complex relations between science and the media. On the premise that the public gets its images of and information about science from the press rather than from television, Ne

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Her focus is on the "popular press," and includes national newspapers, a sample of 100 local newspapers from around the country, and national news magazines such as Time and Newsweek. On the other side, for the views of scientists about what their media image is, she has studied science policy journals and various professional journals of science, engineering and medicine. She has also interviewed public relations officers, scientists and science journalists, and has sat in on press conferences, group discussions and informal sessions in which the relations between science and the media have been discussed. In short, she seems to have left no source of information and opinion unplumbed. Nelkin gives the reader a world of facts as the basis of her analysis.

A broad view of the contents of the book can be discerned in the titles of some of the chapters: The Mystique of Science in the Press, ...

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