embargoes helping or hindering good

Embargoes, helping or hindering good science journalism?

There has been much discussion in various fora about David

Whitehouse's provocative tirade against the embargo system. Many of

the reactions defending the embargo system I agree with, but there

were a couple of points I wanted to add to what's already been said.

Firstly I would like to point out that the discussion about whether

embargoes protect or prevent good science journalism slightly misses

the point about embargoes - that they are the property of science

press officers. Journalists can engage in all the discussion they like

about the embargo system, but the truth is that it is likely to

continue because embargoes are one way that science press officers can

have some control over the stories we give to the media. If we want

the story to be seen or heard by policy makers we can slap on a

midnight embargo to make sure MPs wake up to it on BBC Radio 4's Today

programme and in the morning papers. If it's a story that we would

prefer to reach the general public, we can embargo it to get on the

main BBC and ITN TV news. The embargo is something that press officers

use to help us do our jobs - to get the best possible coverage for our

institutions' work.

And let's face it guys, the embargo is about the only thing we do have

control over. Even with the best media management in the business we

have no control over what journalists do with our stories. There was a

salutary reminder of this at the Science Media Centre (SMC) this week.

Having successfully persuaded the Home Office to get on the front foot

by issuing their annual animal research statistics at an SMC media

briefing (rather than the old policy of sticking the data on their

website and waiting for the anti-animal-research groups to give the

story to their favourite journalists), we woke up with horror to see

that half the press led with Ed Balls' (Secretary of State for

Children, Schools and Families) father attacking the rise in animal

research. Not that I was counting or anything, but our mates at The

Guardian gave the previously unheard-of Prof Balls the headline, lead

paragraph and six paragraphs to attack the rise in animal research

compared with only three for the contents of the briefing itself. But

hey, that happens all the time, and not just in science - read any

spin-doctor's diary.

Of course that doesn't mean that we should abuse the embargo system

and I accept that there has to be a good reason to embargo a story as

well as some rationale for the timing. When the SMC embargoed a media

briefing on clinical trials after the Parexel disaster for the Sunday

papers, we were rightly ridiculed by the dailies for slapping an

artificial embargo on an ongoing public health story. But in most

other cases the objections from journalists tend to relate to whether

or not the embargo time suits them. I love the Today programme dearly

but when producers occasionally do that "do you know who we are" thing

I now take a perverse pleasure in telling them that I do indeed know

who they are but that this time we're trying to reach 8 year olds so

the embargo is geared around Newsround! As I have said before in this

blog, no matter how much we go out drinking with journalists, there

will come a time where the fact that they are journalists and we are

press officers will put us at loggerheads - and in my experience that

tension almost always comes to light over embargoes.

My only other reaction to David Whitehouse's polemic is to ridicule

the notion that the embargo system is somehow preventing hoards of

intrepid investigative science journalists from digging out original

stories. Quite frankly I find that ludicrous. Science stories do not

only appear in embargoed journals or press briefings. There are

beautiful science stories blooming in every scientific institution in

the country just waiting for some science reporter to pluck. After

spending a day with scientists at IGER (the Institute of Grassland and

Environmental Research) in Aberystwyth two years ago, I told at least

10 journalists that they should pay a visit because there were some

great stories to be found. Not one took me up on the idea, but when I

persuaded an IGER scientist to come to London to sit on our panel on

"farming and climate change" last week, every journalist went crazy

over the wonderful story of modifying grass to reduce the methane

being belched into the atmosphere by cows. It wasn't the embargo

system that had prevented journalists getting this story, it was the

long slow train line to Aberystwyth. And if embargoes do thwart

journalists from getting their own science stories, how come so many

of our science journalists do just that? How come Mark Henderson has

broken so many of the cutting edge fertility stories that have graced

the front pages of The Times? How come Rachael Buchanan and Fergus

Walsh have got so many exclusives on the BBC 10 O'clock news? Did they

break any embargoes? No, they pursued stories and kept in touch with

scientists.

It is kind of Whitehouse to argue that the embargo system

discriminates against Sunday papers, but the best Sunday journalists

are not complaining. Robin McKie, science editor of the Observer, has

been taking pot-luck on finding a story at the institutions he visits

almost every Tuesday and Wednesday. On trips organised by press

officers like Sheila Anderson at NERC (Natural Environment Research

Council), he meets scientists, takes time to discuss their research

and almost always finds his story for that Sunday's paper. Far from

whinging about being cruelly denied stories from the journals, McKie

tells me he feels liberated from the pressures that his colleagues on

the dailies face and says it's a privilege to have the time and space

to meet amazing scientists and dig out stories that no one else has.

Likewise his colleague on the health side, Jo Revill, has won more

awards for her journalism that we've had hot dinners - and in five

years I've never heard her complain about being excluded from the

embargo system.

So I'm afraid I find little to agree with in Whitehouse's article and

indeed his starting point - that the embargo system produces shoddy

journalism -simply does not ring true.

I want to give the last word to my friend Geoff Watts, a long serving

BBC health and science reporter, whose witty reaction to David

Whitehouse's article neatly sums the majority view; that embargoing

journal stories almost certainly improves the quality of science

reporting and we remove it at our peril:

"What a splendid idea! Drop all the barriers, get shot of this

fuddy-duddy idea about having five minutes thought before we burst

into speech and print. Then science too can reap all the so-evident

benefits of more general 24 hour news: such as raising the quotient of

speculation to established fact; and such as getting the first

available "expert" to comment rather than the best one."