Decline of Science in Media

A 2008 analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that if you tune for five hours' worth of cable news you will probably catch only one minute's coverage of science and technology—compared with ten minutes of "celebrity and entertainment," twelve minutes of "accidents and disasters," and "26 minutes or crime." As for newspapers, from 1989 to 2005 the number featuring weekly science or science-related sections shrank by nearly two-thirds, from ninety-five to thirty-four. These trends in both types of media have continued and perhaps even accelerated: In 2008, CNN shut down its science, space, technology, and environment unit, and in 2009, the Boston Globe killed its esteemed science section.

Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future (2009-07-13)

• communication
• education
• ignorance
• media
• science