German Lang. Media : Shorter days? Really?
Did I say yet that the tracker appreciates suggestions from science reporters out there telling us of articles interesting from a quality of journalism point of view? Both positive and negative examples are welcome.
The following responds to just such a suggestion. Wolfgang Goede (P.M. journal) gave me a nudge toward a blog article from Caroline Braun, undergraduate in media science studies at the University of Bayreuth. She wrote about the astonishing news that crossed the wires on March, 3rd initiated by a (rather sloppy) NASA press release: The Chilean earthquake on February 27th shortened the length of a day! If they read more than the headlines of the super fast amazing instant messaging news distributors of the world, readers at least learned the detail that the earthquake stole us only about 1,26 microseconds. Sounds minimal: In a lifespan of eighty years this would sum up to a loss of 0.04 seconds – less than tenth the time we need for a blink, explains Braun in her blog. Initially Braun sought only to pick up the news for the website of the online edition of P.M. But then she realized how wrong all these headlines at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Spiegel-Online, Zeit-Online, Bild, etc. are. She asked herself a few simple questions: “Are there any other natural events, that could slow down Earth’s rotation? How much time did we already lose due to earthquakes?” Following these questions (that is, doing research) she realized what the original NASA piece left out: That Earth constantly loses angular momentum to the moon, so that every year, rotation takes another 20 microseconds! Which means, that the days are NOT getting shorter at all, like the headlines shouted, but longer.
Caroline Braun
It’s not that “the media” didn’t recognize that the fast food versions of news got it wrong: Within the following week, Zeit-Online, Bild, and Focus, e.g. published articles with more background and hints about how preliminary the NASA data were. But probably most of the readers had missed these later, well written, well researched articles, says Braun. Most readers will still think that our days are shorter now. We are left with another popular myth spread by a sloppy press. It is almost impossible to delete from the internet especially because it bears a “quality”-stamp from well-known publications (all over the world, not only in Germany!). It took the student Braun about half an hour to research the complete picture (I asked her) and to add it to her blog piece. Is it really worth to risk its reputation just to be able to reproduce wrong news so fast that journalistic research got to be sacrificed?
- Sascha Karberg
