Science & health scares in the media

An interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Inside stories, looked at how the "Bird flu epidemic" has been covered in the UK media. For the next week you will be able to "listen again" (go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/
atoz/index.shtml#i ). The webpage for the whole series (which looks at major news stories and decisions made by the media on them) is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/newspapers.shtml .
During the programme they mentioned the Science Media Centre (http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/ ) "an independent venture working to promote the voices, stories and views of the scientific community to the national news media when science is in the headlines". They obviously target their main service at the UK press, but there are some useful sections on the site e.g. "peer review in a nutshell", "Communicating uncertainty in a soundbite" (which "offers some effective ways for scientists to talk about uncertainty in a brief news interview"). The press briefings are unfortunately not up to date: they say they are revising the site.
Photo by Sheila Webber: January snow in my garden Sheffield.

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