I thought this article was interesting in itself, but as we're speaking about science journalism there are some components that I paid special attention to. One of which was the 'sources.' We talked in class about how reliable, credible, believable sources are critical. I'm curious as to what others think about who was cited. The article obviously poses a personal threat to local citizens and it is a issue that affects everyone. The author states statistics about the numbers of petitions that have been signed, yet not one local, unofficial citizen is interviewed, cited, etc. I wonder if it was part of the 'deadline' constraint, and whether it was an article purely for reporting on the issue, not controversy, so time did not allow further investigation. Or whether space was limited, as it's a short, brief article and it may be subject to further coverage.
Those are just things that came into my head while reading this. I'm curious if others think the same.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
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2 comments:
Few sources are cited, but one of them was a BBC political correspondent who was repeating, supposedly, what he had been told by politicians. I suspect that the lack of "official" sources has to do with time constraints, but I don't think it makes for very good journalism. How are readers to be sure that even primary sources aren't misquoted, let alone secondary sources quoting primary sources?
This article isn't very interesting, the way it is written. And I'll admit that the lack of citations/quotations paints the picture rather dully. I feel like this was a space filler. Perhaps the purpose was really just to get the information out. Or perhaps this goes back to our discussion of how environmental issues are treated by the media...maybe this topic was not really a "hot issue" for the journalist/editor, and they just covered it for social/political reasons.
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