Africa: Is Science Journalism Ignoring Censorship?

World Press Freedom Day was observed on 3 May as usual this year. It marks one of the handful of moral absolutes in our civilisation: the desire for journalists to hold the powerful to account and document current events. But it also presents an opportunity for media professionals to reflect on their practice.

Two events in the wake of this year's observance suggest that there is room for science journalists to think more about how censorship affects their work.

First, I chaired a session at the 13th International Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST2014), held in Brazil earlier this month (5-8 May), which examined how power can be wielded to silence science journalism. Then the recent calls for the closure - or at least a reboot - of the UK Science Media Centre because of its perceived ties to lobbyists have sparked something of a debate.

These two events raised various issues. Perhaps most strikingly, they highlighted the paucity of rigorous studies on the impact of censorship on science journalism. At the PCST meeting, a number of delegates said they rarely thought of science journalism as a field affected by censorship. This is worrying. SciDev.Net works with more than 400 correspondents around the world and many complain that the biggest threat to their livelihoods is getting access to scientists.

Our experience indicates that this is at least in part because of censorship: when our organisation has tried to survey science journalists about how they obtain information, we found various government ministries - particularly, but not uniquely, in north Africa - wanted to vet our questions.

Developed world concerns

This is not only an issue for the developing world. Journalist and academic Kathryn O'Hara of Carleton University, Canada, has observed that the strictures the Canadian government has placed on the research community mean there are now four times as many people employed to restrict access to information as there are to facilitate it. In the United States, an editor at Scientific American claimed last month he was censored during a program on Fox News. [1]

Wendy Yared, director of the Association of European Cancer Leagues, addressing the World Conference of Science Journalists in Finland last year, said that the control lobbyists have on policy and the media in Europe was a major strategic concern to her.

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Africa: Is Science Journalism Ignoring Censorship?