Science Daily: Beware press releases masquerading as news–read until the kicker
In a post last week, I noted that Scienceblog.com, which looks like a news site, is actually a collection of press releases from universities and other research outfits. It’s a perfectly fine source of news releases, but the site, in my view, didn’t do nearly enough to alert readers that what they were reading was not a collection of independently reported news stories, but releases sponsored by institutions. The difference, of course, is that press releases are likely to give us the most glowing view of the research–not necessarily the most accurate.
ScienceDaily is another one you should watch out for. It looks like a news site–it calls itself a news site–but it’s not a news site. And stick around for the kicker on this post; it’s a good one.
The tageline on ScienceDaily’s homepage is, “ScienceDaily–Your source for the latest research news. The home page leads off with “Today’s Top Science News,” and, below that, “More Science Headlines.”
I didn’t see anything at the top that told me where these stories came from, but from the number of stories on the home page, you’d think these folks had a considerable staff. There’s a lot of news there! Or should I say, “news”?
Marching off to the “About This Site” link, I read that ScienceDaily has three million monthly visitors and 15 million page views a month. The site has 65,000 research articles and is updated several times a day, seven days a week. Not until halfway through the lengthy “about us” do we get to the heart of the matter:
ScienceDaily is best known for showcasing the top science news stories from the world’s leading universities and research organizations….Universities have come to rely on ScienceDaily to spread news about their scientists’ findings to a wider audience.
Well, well. In the interest of transparency, ScienceDaily would have been far more accurate if it said, at the top of its home page, “ScienceDaily–Press releases from world’s leading universities and research organizations.”
So why isn’t that the tagline? Maybe because readers are more likely to show up if they think it’s news, rather than if they know it’s press agentry. Maybe if ScienceDaily were transparent, it wouldn’t get three million visitors and 15 million page views a month.
Now we know how ScienceDaily generates so many stories: It aggregates university handouts. You and I could set up a site to do that in 15 minutes and start stealing ScienceDaily’s readers.
Maybe that’s another reason ScienceDaily obscures what it’s doing–nobody finds out that this is much easier than it looks. ScienceDaily makes the easy stuff (republishing press releases) look hard (“the site covers discoveries in all fields of the physical, biological, earth and applied sciences”).
ScienceDaily claims to do original stories and original reporting, and I’m happy to believe that.
Ready? Here’s the kicker:
I found one recent example of what I thought was original reporting: “Scientists Create Human Embryonic Stem Cells With Enhanced Pluripotency,” ScienceDaily wrote on 5/3. At the bottom of the story, it says:
Adapted from materials provided by Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. Original article written by Nicole Giese.
So there you go–original reporting.
Except that when I compared the story with the Whitehead Release, I found only the most minor copyediting changes. (Try it yourself, using “track changes” in Microsoft Word.)
How could this be original reporting by Nicole Giese, when it was nearly identical to the press release?
Surprise! Nicole Giese did NOT write an original story for ScienceDaily; she wrote the press release!
ScienceDaily not only republished the press release, it republished the byline. This is a level of cleverness I haven’t seen elsewhere on the net. Congrats, ScienceDaily: You guys are good.
- Paul Raeburn
May 6th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Amazing and distressing, Paul. By coincidence, in the next post down I refer to a very different site with nearly the same name, scienceblogs.com. Don’t mix them up. As you say – transparency is the key. Such sites as Futurity, NSF’s Science360 News Service, Popular Science, ANI (Asian News International), all to varying degrees have rewritten, or re-run intact, press releases, and to varying degrees make it clear that their news comes from public affairs officers. One doubts that there is a satisfying and legal way to require clear labeling. But ethical outlets won’t put a varnish of journalism camouflage on material that is entirely or in essence a press release.
May 6th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
A similar website in Australia is Science Alert (http://www.sciencealert.com.au/). It does show the source of the article in the Editor’s Notes at the bottom of the story. But like the websites previously mentioned, it does come across as a news website.
I should add that some features and stories are written by the editorial team that runs the website.
May 6th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
It’s my view that the internet has effectively changed the relationship of the press release and the press. In the past organizations created releases they hoped and prayed traditional media would pick up and enhance. They hoped and prayed but often their dreams didn’t come true. Often press releases ended up being read only by their creators because there was just no space for them in newspapers or on TV.
In the 21st century every organization which creates releases has begun to view their efforts not as media aids but as publications. They assume, as my guess ScienceDaily does, that the only place most of their releases will be seen by people is on the Net. But it will be seen by some and at least it won’t just be thrown away.
So if releases seem to pretend to be news it is because, in a very real way, they have become legitimized news vehicles. After been so often and so long ignored they have begun pushing the journalists out of the way and now talk directly to their audience. At least in part. That’s really what Paul was observing here. The end of the journalist as intermediary. The rise of the press release as a legitimate publication. At least in part.
And my guess is that as this becomes more and more understood releases are going to change. They are going to become increasingly more journalistic and probably (dare I say) increasingly more fun to read.
May 7th, 2010 at 7:03 am
Darren–Thanks for alerting us to Science Alert, which, as you point out, does indeed seem to be an other-side-of-the-world equivalent to ScienceDaily.
And Stephen–I agree with you that university press offices are trying to reach out directly to the public, and I’m all for it–as long as it’s entirely clear what’s going on. I suspect universities would be unhappy if I started a website of my idiosyncratic ravings on science releases and the tagline was “University news releases–direct to you!”
May 7th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
The question brought up here is, of course, “What’s Journalism?” specifically, science journalism.
So what does a real reporter add to a press release? And does the reading public need or want that?
I’m way off on the end of the spectrum advocating for journalists who represent readers, not universities, institutions, companies, researchers, etc. No disrespect intended to people whose job is to represent those institutions, but they’re different jobs.
It’s not just press release aggregators, but also regular newspapers who run press releases almost verbatim and with complete credulity.
May 18th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Nicole is the press person at the Whitehead. That’s what they meant by “original article.” So it’s not actually claiming original reporting. And this would meet the definition of transparency — which is the problem with transparency.