CHAPTER EIGHT

LEFT UNSAID: THE MARGINALISATION OF SCIENTIST-CRITICS IN THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF CONTROVERSIAL TECHNOLOGIES

FELICITY MELLOR

Introduction

Most forms of media analysis focus, unsurprisingly, on what is reported in the media. In this paper, I focus on what is not reported—on the absences, gaps, silences and omissions in the media reporting of science and technology. In particular, I examine the non-reporting and under-reporting of scientists who are critical of controversial technologies or whose research undermines or problematises the arguments in favour of such technologies. Content analyses of the media coverage of science typically take as their starting point a large corpus of media articles whose key features are then recorded. This approach has revealed broad patterns and trends in coverage, such as the emphasis on biomedical stories or the increasing reliance on expert citations (e.g. Bauer et al. 1995; Bucchi 2003; Nisbet and Lewenstein 2002). The analytical categories used to organise content analyses are typically drawn from the sampled texts. For instance, the extensive longitudinal study of European media coverage of biotechnology co-ordinated by Durant, Bauer and Gaskell (1998) identified a number media frames, such as “progress”, “economic” and “global”, suggested by the media texts themselves. Whilst this approach ensures that the study describes the actual coverage rather than the researchers’ preconceptions of what that coverage may be like, it also eclipses any frames which are absent altogether. Such an approach therefore accepts the dominant framing and looks at variations within such framing rather than 158 Chapter Eight challenging the framing itself and the implicit demarcations upon which it is based. This paper, by contrast, is an attempt to examine that which is rendered invisible by the dominant framing—it is more “discontent analysis” than “content analysis”. Rather than taking a corpus of newspaper articles as a starting point, I focus on gaps and omissions from the outset, drawing on sources beyond the sampled newspapers to identify which news sources are missing from the media coverage. The selections which journalists make inevitably privilege some voices whilst marginalising others. The norms and constraints of news production—especially the application of taken-for-granted news values— ensures that some sources are reported whilst others are not. Controversies over the development of potentially-risky technologies involve a range of possible news sources, including scientists, politicians, commercial corporations, and environmental activists. The ways in which the media selectively represents or ignores these sources contributes to the framing of the issue in the wider public discourse and can contribute to a spiral of silence in which dissenting views are suppressed (Priest 2006). The epistemic authority often granted to science means that the media positioning of scientific voices for or against a technology is of particular significance. If scientists critical of controversial technologies are repeatedly excluded from media reports, supporters of a technology can more easily claim that their own position rests on an objective assessment of the facts whilst dismissing critics as emotional and unscientific. As Carvalho (2007) has argued in the case of global warming, the representation of scientific claims within the media is strongly entangled with ideological commitments. My analysis seeks to investigate whether media reports routinely omit scientific news sources which fail to fit with an ideology of technological libertarianism. As the double-meaning of my title suggests, I am interested in how media silences contribute to the marginalisation of scientific claims that are compatible with broadly leftist or environmentalist positions. In what follows, I look at the reporting of two technological controversies in the UK press. My first examples are drawn from the coverage of genetically modified (GM) crops; my second set of examples come from the debate over the future role of nuclear energy. Together these two cases reveal the media selection of scientific news sources with regard to a new and an established technology. I present the two controversies in turn, beginning each case by briefly presenting some background on the issue and the media context of the controversy, before going on to examine some examples of events and sources omitted from the media coverage. My method entails a form of iterative cross-searching The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 159 of Controversial Technologies of newspaper databases, specialist publications and web search engines in order to identify potential news events involving scientists or research findings which challenge the claims made by supporters of the technology. I then search the full text newspaper archives to establish whether or not these were reported. I focus on the UK national daily and Sunday newspapers, but in some cases I also refer to local papers and to other media.1 I conclude with some comments on the pattern of under-reporting revealed in these examples, its relationship to news values and its ideological orientation.

GM crops

GM crops first became the subject of widespread reports in the British media in 1999. In 1998, biologist Arpad Pusztai had claimed in a TV interview that he had found that rats fed with GM potatoes suffered gut damage. He said that personally he would not eat GM foods. Two days later, he was suspended from the Rowett Institute where he worked. When, a few months later, a group of scientists wrote to to complain about Pusztai’s treatment, they triggered months of intense media coverage with headlines like the Daily Express’s classic “Mutant Crops Could Kill You” (Daily Express 1999). Some high-profile scientists expressed their outrage at this coverage. For instance, the government’s then Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Sir Robert May called the coverage “an extraordinarily one-sided presentation of the facts” (House of Lords 2000). When the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology looked into the affair, it too concluded that the media reporting of the GM issue had consisted of “unfounded scare stories” and “journalistic hyperbole” (House of Commons 1999). Their report on GM foods recommended that media coverage of scientific matters should be governed by a special Code of Practice. In response, the Royal Society put forward some editorial guidelines and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology commissioned a report by researchers John Durant and Nicola Lindsay on the media coverage of the Pusztai affair (Durant and Lindsay 2000). Durant and Lindsay’s report was extensively cited in the influential Lords’ Report on Science and Society, which also commended the Royal Society’s editorial guidelines (House of Lords 2000). The Lords’ Report in turn led to the setting up of the Science Media Centre in 2002. Thus concern about how GM crops had been reported led to institutional attempts to influence how the media covered science. 160 Chapter Eight

Durant and Lindsay found that the decision by certain newspapers to campaign on genetic modification was “a decision to politicise coverage of GM food, and it was this politicisation which gave the debate its characteristically confrontational and even raucous qualities” (Durant and Lindsay 2000, 21). This suggests that without the reporting, there would have been nothing political about GM crops. Others have argued that the demarcation of science from non-science and the reduction of the issue to a technical question of scientific risk assessment is itself a political move which serves to support the political status quo and the interests of the agrichemical industry (Meyer et al. 2005; Wynne 2001). Cook et al. (2006) found that in a later phase of GM media coverage science was typically configured as supporting the pro-GM position and that pro-GM articles adopted a narrow scientific frame. Articles critical of GM technology relied on politicians and campaign groups for authoritative quotations rather than on scientists (see also Cook 2004). Rather than assuming, as Durant and Lindsay did, that the reporting of the Pusztai affair was problematic, an alternative approach is to focus on the failure of the media to award similar stories a comparable level of coverage. The case of David Quist and Ignacio Chapela illustrates a media silence that is consistent with Cook’s findings that science is frequently aligned in the media with a pro-GM position.

Quist and Chapela

In November 2001, David Quist and Ignacio Chapela of the University of California Berkeley claimed in a paper published in Nature that DNA from GM maize could be found in wild maize in Mexico. This finding raised concerns about the environmental impact of GM crops, especially with regard to maize diversity. In April 2002, after receiving criticisms of the paper and despite the paper having already been through the standard peer review process prior to publication, Nature took the unusual step of publishing an editorial note withdrawing the paper in addition to publishing two papers rebutting Quist and Chapela’s claims (Kaplinsky et al. 2002; Metz and Fütterer 2002). In the same issue of the journal, Quist and Chapela (2002) admitted to flaws in one aspect of their original work but presented new results which they said confirmed the spread of GM to wild plants. In the UK, the retraction by Nature was flagged up by the new Science Media Centre in what was only its second press release. This presented a series of quotes from scientists dismissing Quist and Chapela’s claims and made no reference to Quist and Chapela’s new work (SMC 2002). The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 161 of Controversial Technologies

As well as its implications for the impact of GM crops on biodiversity, the story also had a wider relevance regarding the control of science by the biotechnology industry. Chapela had been an outspoken critic of a 1998 contract between the biotechnology firm Novartis and the University of California Berkeley. The contract secured five years of funding for the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology but gave Novartis first refusal on all of the department’s patents, regardless of the source of funding for the research from which the patent stemmed. Chapela was later refused tenure at Berkeley (Dalton 2003; Dalton 2004; Rudy and Ten Eyck 2006). Despite some similarities to the Pusztai story, the wider political context of the story, and the added status initially associated with Quist and Chapela’s work having been peer-reviewed and published in a top journal, this story received little coverage in the UK press. Of the national newspapers, only the Daily Mail, Guardian and Daily Telegraph reported the original findings (Chapman 2001; Highfield 2001; Vidal 2001), whilst the Daily Telegraph and the Times carried single reports on the retraction by Nature (Clover 2002; Henderson 2002). Only the Guardian reported the story more extensively and over a longer period carrying a total of ten news and feature articles on it (Brown 2002; Meek 2002a; 2002b; Monbiot 2002; Rowell 2003; Vidal 2005; Vidal and Brown 2005), as well as publishing a letter from Chapela (2002). The whole story was explored in a programme on BBC Radio 4, the broadcast of which coincided with US threats to take the EU to court over its moratorium of GM crops, but the only newspaper to review the radio programme was the Guardian (Mahoney 2003). All the other national newspapers made no reference to Quist or Chapela at all over the five years from the date of the publication of the Nature paper.2 It is also noteworthy that the Daily Mail, which had led the 1999 anti-GM campaign, carried just one article on the story. Both Pusztai’s work and that of Quist and Chapela could be used to support the case against the introduction of GM crops. The Quist and Chapela case shows that such research, even when accompanied by questionable institutional manoeuvrings, does not always attract the widespread media coverage that Pusztai received.

Precautionary Scientist Groups

The case of two organisations representing scientists who take a precautionary stance towards GM technology suggests that the media silence that Quist and Chapela experienced in the UK press may be the norm. The US-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the UK- based Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) both call for a 162 Chapter Eight precautionary approach to GM and question the benefits claimed for it. The UCS was formed in 1968 during the student actions against MIT’s involvement with military research. The group initially represented MIT faculty opposed to military research, but its membership soon widened to include scientists at other institutions (Nelkin 1972). The organisation’s aims included critically scrutinising the government’s science and technology policy and campaigning for science and technology to be used for humane purposes. Although it formed around a military issue, from the start the UCS expressed an interest in environmental issues, stating in one of its foundational documents that one area of future action would be genetic manipulation, even though this was at the time, as the statement said, “beyond the horizon” (Downey 1988). Today, with GM crops having been grown commercially in the US for over a decade, the UCS calls for rigorous reviews of the ecological impacts of some GM crops, the introduction of safety testing and labelling of GM foodstuff, and a ban on the outdoor production of pharmaceutical and industrial crops (UCS 2007). The UK-based Scientists for Global Responsibility is a more recent organisation, formed in 1992 from three precursor organisations, including Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, which campaigned to reduce the use of science and technology for military purposes. The new organisation saw a widening of focus to embrace environmental issues. SGR members include high-profile scientists Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees. SGR debated its position regarding GM crops at a conference in 1998 and reached a consensus position, articulated in a 1999 position statement, opposing the technology (SGR 1999). The organisation expresses concern about the possible irreversible impacts of GM crops on the environment and on human and animal health and questions the degree of control the biotechnology industry exerts over scientific research in this area (SGR 2007a). Of the thousands of articles in the British press over the last five years which mention genetic modification,3 no articles cited the SGR in connection to GM except one piece in the Guardian which was authored by a member of the organisation—and even in this article SGR was only mentioned in the byline (Novotny 2003). Only four articles mentioned the UCS in connection to GM (Clover 2004; Lean 2004; Rifkin 2006; Utton 2004). By contrast, the Royal Society, whose statements have emphasised the continuity of GM crop development with conventional plant breeding and have accepted the potential benefits of GM whilst acknowledging the need for further research into areas of potential risk, is mentioned in some two hundred articles.4 The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 163 of Controversial Technologies

New nuclear power

Like GM crops, nuclear power is a controversial technology which is contested and defended through appeals to science as well as through broader discourses concerning energy policy and the social and ethical evaluation of risk. The civilian nuclear power programme has been widely reported in the news media, particularly at times of major accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In a study of the US media from 1945 to the late 1980s, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) found that by the 1970s the early framing of nuclear power as progressive had begun to be supplanted by more critical discourses, thanks in part to the activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists. By the close of the 1980s, nuclear power was readily framed as a run-away technology. In recent years, the growing pressure for governments to mitigate global warming has led to what some claim will be a “nuclear renaissance”. The appropriation of climate change to the cause of nuclear power is a process that began in the UK as early as the late 1980s when the then prime minister drew attention to global warming in an attempt to promote nuclear power as an alternative to coal-fired stations (Carvalho 2007). In the 1990s, the nuclear industry pursued this reconfiguration of nuclear power as environmentally-friendly through pro­ active public relations campaigns (Tilson 1996). In the 2000s, nuclear power is frequently cited as a way of reducing carbon emissions and of increasing energy security. There have, however, been few analyses of the media representation of nuclear energy during this most recent period.

The UK energy review

In July 2006, the UK Government published a review of all aspects of the UK’s energy supply in the light of global warming, threats to energy security and the energy gap expected from the decommissioning of the current generation of nuclear power stations over the next two decades.5 Initiated by prime minister Tony Blair the previous November, a key part of the review was to address the question of whether to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. The review was trailed for months before its official publication with Blair indicating that he supported the construction of new nuclear power plants (e.g. Wintour 2006; Wintour and Adam 2006). The report itself found that the need to limit greenhouse gases had improved the economics of nuclear power and that new nuclear “would make a significant contribution to meeting our energy goals” (DTI 2006, 17). 164 Chapter Eight

As with GM crops, Scientists for Global Responsibility take a precautionary stance on nuclear power and argue that global warming can be addressed without building a new generation of nuclear power stations (e.g. SGR 2007b). In April 2006 they submitted an open letter to the prime minister signed by 40 UK scientists with expertise in energy or climate issues in which they set out their reasons for opposing new nuclear power (Parkinson 2006). The only newspapers to report this letter were two Scottish papers, the Sunday Herald and the Evening Express (Edwards 2006; Evening Express 2006). No UK-wide paper covered the story even though a few days later a report by the Commons Environmental Audit Committee, which set out a similar position, was widely reported. Only one newspaper’s coverage of the Committee’s report included a comment from a signatory of the Scientists for Global Responsibility letter and even this did not mention the letter or the group (Branigan and Vidal 2006). Those papers which did cite nuclear sceptics other than the MPs on the Committee, quoted green campaigners or, in two cases, environmental advisors, rather than scientists. By contrast, the pro-nuclear views of the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, were widely reported in some 32 newspaper articles over the course of the year. Similarly, James Lovelock, the chemist famous for the Gaia concept, received widespread media coverage for a new book in which he argued in favour of new nuclear power as a medium-term means of limiting carbon dioxide emissions.6 This was a position he had first taken publicly a couple of years before. In his book, he also dismissed renewable technologies, especially wind power, and he claimed he would be happy to have nuclear waste buried in his garden (Lovelock 2006). At the end of the book, he reveals that there were plans to build a wind farm near his house in the Devon countryside. The press coverage of Lovelock’s book included a review in the Times by Sir David King (2006) and Lovelock was also cited in news and feature articles about new nuclear power. Thus opposition to nuclear power in the reporting of the Energy Review was attributed to campaigners rather than to scientists and over the course of the year the voice of science appeared supportive of the technology. Lovelock’s views on nuclear power were newsworthy because they seemed at odds with his image as an environmentally-friendly radical scientist whose Gaia theory has been embraced by some Greens. Similarly, Sir David King, as a government advisor, was newsworthy as an authoritative figure with political influence. Yet, as with GM, whatever news values and institutional hierarchies contribute to the media’s selections and omissions, the result was that the scientists whose voices The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 165 of Controversial Technologies were heard on the nuclear issue were those who support a new generation of nuclear power rather than those who oppose it.

Chernobyl death count

The pre-publicity for the Energy Review coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl accident and with a debate about how many deaths the accident would ultimately have caused. The reporting of this nuclear news event shows how scientific findings which emphasise the dangers of nuclear power can also be relatively under-reported. In 2003, the United Nations, in collaboration with the governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, established a series of meetings, known as the Chernobyl Forum, tasked with providing a scientific consensus on the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. The Forum convened two panels of experts from the International Atomic Energy Authority and the World Health Organisation to review the current state of scientific knowledge on the environmental and health impacts of the accident. The draft report, issued at an international conference in Vienna in September 2005, predicted that 4,000 people may ultimately die as a result of the accident—a figure far lower than previous estimates. This headline figure was based only on the emergency workers and others exposed to the highest levels of radiation. The report acknowledged that deaths from lower levels of exposure are hard to assess and would lead to further deaths. However, only the 4,000 high-exposure deaths were presented in the press release accompanying the report, the subtitle of which claimed: “UN report provides definite answers” (UN 2005). In the week following its release, the findings of the Forum’s draft report appeared in brief news articles in the Times (on two consecutive days), Independent and Mirror, and in a slightly longer piece in the Guardian (Times 2005a; 2005b; Independent 2005; Mirror 2005; Radford 2005). The Times also carried two opinion pieces on the story (Hume 2005; Maddox 2005). All the stories cited the prediction of 4,000 deaths, but none noted that this figure related only to the highest-exposure victims rather than the larger population in the contaminated regions. The Forum’s full findings were published as three separate reports. The volume reviewing the health consequences of Chernobyl was published by the World Health Organisation on April 13 2006, two weeks before the twentieth anniversary of the disaster (Bennet et al. 2006). This time the press release cited 9,000 excess deaths from cancer among the most exposed population (WHO 2006). The anniversary ensured widespread media coverage of the disaster. Of the coverage in the UK 166 Chapter Eight national newspapers during April 2006, a total of 26 articles cited figures for the Chernobyl death toll. The Forum’s figure of 4,000 deaths had been based on a study published ten years earlier by Elisabeth Cardis of the International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC). According to the journal Nature, Cardis was concerned about the way this figure had been used without qualification in the IAEA press release (Peplow 2006). In a new paper that was due to be published in the International Journal of Cancer, she and her co-authors predicted that by 2065 there could be a total of 16,000 deaths from cancer attributable to Chernobyl across the whole of Europe (Cardis et al. 2006a). In a separate review published at the same time, Cardis stated that:

based on the experience of other populations exposed to ionising radiation, a small increase in the relative risk of cancer is expected, even at the low to moderate doses received. Although it is expected that epidemiological studies will have difficulty identifying such a risk, it may nevertheless translate into a substantial number of radiation-related cancer cases in the future, given the very large number of individuals exposed. (Cardis et al. 2006b)

The IARC publicised Cardis’s findings in a press release timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Chernobyl (IARC 2006), but the only newspapers to mention this work were and Independent on Sunday (Connor 2006; Osborn and Lean 2006). Other scientists were also concerned that the Chernobyl Forum had downplayed the scale of the problem. In a commentary in Nature, thyroid cancer specialist Dillwyn Williams and the former head of the WHO’s Department for Radiation and Health, Keith Baverstock, argued that it was still too soon for a definitive account of the health impacts of the accident and called for comprehensive studies of the most affected areas (Williams and Baverstock 2006). In an interview with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Baverstock claimed that the IAEA dominated the Forum discussions and that many of the IAEA members were strong proponents of nuclear power (Watermann 2006). Baverstock’s criticisms were reported in just one newspaper article (Henderson 2006a).7 Williams and Baverstock’s Nature commentary had appeared in a special issue of the journal which also carried a report by staff writer Mark Peplow (2006) examining the debate over the Chernobyl Forum figures. Peplow quoted Ed Lyman, a nuclear specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who said the Forum report was a “completely misleading view The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 167 of Controversial Technologies of the health consequences of the accident.” Lyman’s comments were not followed up in any of the UK national newspapers. Other reports disputing the Forum’s findings were also published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the disaster. A report for (2006) by 52 doctors and scientists in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, drew on Belarus national cancer statistics to predict a much higher death rate. This study estimated a final toll of 93,000 extra deaths from cancer due to Chernobyl. Unlike the IARC findings, the Greenpeace report was widely reported in the media coverage of the anniversary with all the dailies except the Daily Mail and three of the Sunday titles covering the story. Of the fifteen articles which mentioned the Greenpeace report during April 2006, only four noted that the report had been compiled by a team of scientists (Bloomfield and Highfield 2006; Jowit 2006; Osborn 2006; Vidal 2006). A meta-analysis by two independent radiation scientists commissioned by the Green group in the European Parliament estimated 30,00-60,000 excess deaths from cancer (Fairlie and Sumner 2006). This report was directly cited in , Guardian and News of the World only (Jowit 2006; News of the World 2006; Vidal and Milner 2006). Three further articles cited death tolls in the same range without attributing the source of the figures, and the Eire edition of the Sun also referred directly to the report in a story about Chernobyl’s impact on Ireland (Conneely 2006; MacAdam 2006; Osborn 2006; Vidal 2006). Through the whole of 2006, the 42-word article in the News of the World was the only one to quote either of the report’s two authors. One reason for the widely differing predictions about the number who would eventually die as a result of the accident was the lack of knowledge about the consequences of exposure to low levels of radiation. Studies of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have shown that at higher levels the dose-response relationship is linear. However, there is uncertainty about whether the linear model also applies at lower doses, whether there is a threshold below which exposure to radiation has no effect, or whether, conversely, there is a more exaggerated response at lower levels of exposure. A review by the US National Research Council (2006), first released in June 2005, found that most evidence pointed towards the absence of a threshold and the applicability of the linear model even for the smallest doses of ionising radiation. Throughout 2006, no newspapers discussed the debate over the different dose-response models.8 The only article to allude to the issue was a pro-nuclear opinion piece in the Independent by Dominic Lawson (2006) which implied that the threshold model was correct: 168 Chapter Eight

The point seems to be that whereas the official safety level here and in America is based on the idea that the effects of radiation are linear in nature, the facts show that the true risk ratio follows a J-shape: radiation is either harmless or beneficial up to surprisingly high levels, and then suddenly, as soon as the dose becomes truly massive, it becomes very dangerous indeed.

Lawson cited the findings of the Chernobyl Forum in equally certain and exaggerated terms but referred to none of the studies predicting higher death rates:

... although the Western media for many years claimed 100,000 people had died as a result, it appears that only 134 people are known to have received dangerously high doses of radiation, of whom 14 have since died (though several of those deaths were attributed to unrelated causes). The official UN report concluded that the radiation from Chernobyl caused no measurable increase in birth defects and no rise in the “background rate” of leukaemia.

Lawson’s article rehearsed an argument that would be repeated on the BBC a few months later. The documentary Nuclear Nightmares was broadcast under the BBC’s Horizon strand on July 13 2006, just two days after the publication of the UK Energy Review. The film set out to dispel the image portrayed in its own title that nuclear radiation was dangerous. The main claim of the programme was that the correct dose-response model is one with a threshold below which radiation is harmless and that the radiation levels associated with major accidents at nuclear power plants fall below this threshold. The programme argued that linear extrapolations from the high levels of exposure at Hiroshima to the lower levels resulting from power plant accidents are not appropriate. Further, the programme suggested, as Lawson had, that low levels of radiation could even be beneficial. The programme drew on the findings of the Chernobyl Forum to suggest that the predicted cancer deaths from Chernobyl did not transpire. As a BBC press release put it: “for the victims of Chernobyl the real problem is not radiation—but radiophobia, the fear of radiation, which has caused acute psychological trauma” (BBC 2006). The programme’s main interviewee was Dr Mike Repacholi, head of the World Health Organisation’s Electromagnetic Fields Programme and one of the authors of the Forum’s health report. The documentary gave no indication that Repacholi was a controversial figure accused by some campaign groups of downplaying the potential health risks of electromagnetic fields and of having close ties with, and accepting funding from, industries with vested interests in the debate about low level The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 169 of Controversial Technologies radiation (Microwave News 2006). Nor did the programme make any mention of the scientific studies discussed above which estimated a far higher death toll. The programme was puffed before transmission in a piece in the Times by science editor Mark Henderson (2006b). Like the programme itself, and the BBC’s own press release, this article included no dissenting voices and quoted only the scientists who appeared on the programme. Other newspapers briefly previewed the programme as the day’s critic’s choice. Three of them joked that the programme might have been commissioned by the nuclear industry or the government (Gilbert 2006; Guardian 2006; Simon 2006) and the , whilst giving a largely sympathetic review, noted the conspicuous lack of countervailing voices (French 2006). Other previews, however, called the programme a “fascinating documentary”, “an astonishing report” and “one of the most important programmes Horizon has made” (Hughes 2006; Bateson 2006; Chater 2006). In the days and weeks following the broadcast, no newspapers ran reviews or features offering a more balanced argument or citing the studies which dispute the Forum figures presented in the programme. Even a long review in the New Statesman was entirely uncritical, claiming that the programme presented a “powerful argument” (Billen 2006).

Conclusion

The examples examined above reveal instances of non-reporting and under-reporting of scientists who are critical of controversial technologies, and of scientific research which could be used to challenge such technologies. Research that raised concerns about the impact of GM crops on biodiversity was under-reported and scientist organisations taking a precautionary or oppositional stance towards GM were all but ignored. Where opposition to GM is voiced, it comes not from scientists but from environmentalists or consumer groups. As Cook (2004) has argued, since science is often taken as the voice of reason and evidence, the positioning of scientific voices as pro-GM means that opposition to GM can easily be construed as non-scientific, irrational and emotional. In this way, science becomes aligned with the interests of the biotechnology companies which stand to profit from GM technology and opposition is undermined. The pattern of coverage in the case of new nuclear power is slightly different, no doubt in part due to the long history of social movements formed around opposition to the industry. In this case, some research findings that could be used to support an anti-nuclear position were 170 Chapter Eight reported quite widely. However, estimates putting the number of deaths from Chernobyl higher than those predicted by the UN Chernobyl Forum were typically attributed to the campaigning organisation Greenpeace and less than a third of newspaper articles represented the authors of the Greenpeace report as scientists. In general, the debate about the Chernobyl death toll was under-reported, with headline figures being reproduced with little exploration of what they meant and no discussion about the uncertainties of modelling the dose-response relationship for low levels of radiation. Taken together, the media coverage of the Chernobyl anniversary presented a bewildering array of contradictory statistics. A few months later, even the Greenpeace findings had been forgotten in the response to the BBC’s Horizon documentary. At one level these media silences are the product of professional norms and practices. Journalists work with an implicit sense of what makes a story newsworthy—tacit criteria for news selection which Galtung and Ruge (1965) famously articulated as a set of news values. Galtung and Ruge argued that these news values included, among other factors: consonance (journalists are most likely to report events which fulfil their expectations of what such events should be like); events involving elite people; and negative events. Galtung and Ruge’s categories have since been refined by other scholars, with references to the power elite, celebrity, proximity and bad news found to be among the news values which dominate contemporary news (Bell 1991; Harcup and O’Neill 2001). To some extent, the application of conventional news values explains why elite actors such as Sir David King and the Royal Society are quoted in media reports while dissenting organisations like the UCS and the SGR are ignored, or why a story involving US researchers (Quist and Chapela) is not reported in most UK newspapers. Consonance and continuity, too, may be factors—if scientists are generally expected to be pro-technology, journalists may preferentially seek out sources who match this expectation. Yet news values have only limited analytical power in explaining patterns of reporting. The notion of news values is a way of codifying journalists’ practice rather than explaining it. Even given standard news values, dissenting groups could be constructed as newsworthy. As groups of scientists, both the UCS and SGR have epistemic authority which could be foregrounded in news stories in order to satisfy, albeit more weakly than Sir David King or the Royal Society, the news value associated with the power elite. The negativity or controversy associated with a counter- establishment voice also fulfils standard news values. The Marginalisation of Scientist-Critics in the Media Coverage 171 of Controversial Technologies

Limited or poor public relations efforts may also account for the low profile of the UCS and the SGR and for Greenpeace’s greater success in promoting its findings. What is significant, however, is not so much which professional practices are implicated in particular patterns of reporting, but the ideological positioning which such patterns reproduce. The relative absence from the media of reports of scientific findings which raise concerns about the safety or environmental impact of controversial technologies, and the effective silencing of scientist-organisations which are critical of the technology, contribute to an overall picture in which scientists are presented as supportive of the technologies and accepting of their supposed benefits. GM foods and nuclear power are both, I believe, technologies of last resort. They entail an intervention in the material world at its most fundamental level—structural alterations to the configuration of life and of matter. This makes them qualitatively different from more traditional technologies and means that their consequences may be hard to predict or to contain. Whether or not we need either of these technologies is a judgement which inevitably mixes social, political, economic and scientific factors. Attitudes towards these technologies are not a simple matter of being pro- or anti-science, nor of being left- or right-wing. However, appeals to these technologies are made in a context in which they are controlled by multinational companies who stand to profit from their implementation. The promise of a techno-fix can easily distract attention away from social and economic alternatives for addressing the problems at hand, alternatives which would almost certainly also impact on the global distribution of wealth and power. In this sense, taking a position on these technologies is aligned with an ideological position. To insist on the need for these technologies or to downplay their uncertainties and risks, and to claim scientific objectivity for this position, is to act ideologically. My examples of the media coverage (or non-coverage) of these issues do not show that the media consistently promotes a technologically libertarian position. Critical voices are heard. However, my examples do suggest that these voices are rarely the voices of scientists. There are scientists who are critical of the technological fix, but these scientists— individual researchers and organisations—are rarely reported in the media. This is despite media norms requiring balanced reporting. The result is that science comes to be equated with a pro-technology position which serves to protect corporate interests. Until journalists begin to take a more critical approach to science, seeking out alternative sources rather than relying on those with the best-oiled PR machines, scientist-critics will remain 172 Chapter Eight invisible and science will continue to seem to be the preserve of technological libertarians.

Notes

1. The newspapers selected were: Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Express on Sunday, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Mail on Sunday, Mirror, News of the World, Observer, Sun, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times and Times. Searches were conducted on the Factiva electronic database. 2. Search of national newspapers for “(Quist or Chapela) and (GM or GMO or genetically modified or genetic modification)”, 01/11/2001-01/11/2006. 3. A search of the newspapers listed above for “genetic modification” or “genetically modified” from 1 Jan 2001 to 31 Dec 2006 yields about 4000 hits. Although some of these hits represent the same article printed in different editions of a paper, it is likely that 4000 is an underestimate of total articles since many articles on this subject only refer to the acronyms GM or GMO. 4. A search for “Royal Society not (Royal Society of or Royal Society for the) and (GM or GMO or genetically modified or genetic modification)” yields about 200 separate hits. The acronyms GM and GMO can have other meanings, but in combination with the search term “Royal Society” this is unlikely to lead to a significant overestimate of article number. For the Royal Society’s position on GM see, e.g. Royal Society 2002. 5. The Energy Review was to inform a new white paper just three years after a previous white paper had put the emphasis on renewables. 6. Factiva search of UK national papers for “lovelock and nuclear” in the period 01/01/06-31/12/06 gives 73 hits (though this includes some duplicate articles, letters, etc). 7. Search of all newspapers for “Baverstock AND Chernobyl” 01/01/05­ 01/01/07. 8. Search of national newspapers for “dose AND linear AND radiation”.

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