Complex research papers and data flood academic journals daily, and science journalists play a pivotal role in disseminating that information to the public. This can be a daunting task, requiring a keen understanding of the subject matter and the ability to translate dense academic language into narratives that resonate with the general public.

Several resources and tip sheets, including the Know Your Research section here at The Journalist’s Resource, aim to help journalists hone their skills in reporting on academic research.

But what factors do science journalists look for to decide whether a social science research study is trustworthy and newsworthy? That’s the question researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Melbourne in Australia examine in a recent study, “How Do Science Journalists Evaluate Psychology Research?” published in September in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

Their online survey of 181 mostly U.S.-based science journalists looked at how and whether they were influenced by four factors in fictitious research summaries: the sample size (number of participants in the study), sample representativeness (whether the participants in the study were from a convenience sample or a more representative sample), the statistical significance level of the result (just barely statistically significant or well below the significance threshold), and the prestige of a researcher’s university.

The researchers found that sample size was the only factor that had a robust influence on journalists’ ratings of how trustworthy and newsworthy a study finding was.

University prestige had no effect, while the effects of sample representativeness and statistical significance were inconclusive.

But there’s nuance to the findings, the authors note.

“I don’t want people to think that science journalists aren’t paying attention to other things, and are only paying attention to sample size,” says Julia Bottesini, an independent researcher, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Psychology Department at UC Davis, and the first author of the study.

Overall, the results show that “these journalists are doing a very decent job” vetting research findings, Bottesini says.

Also, the findings from the study are not generalizable to all science journalists or other fields of research, the authors note.

“Instead, our conclusions should be circumscribed to U.S.-based science journalists who are at least somewhat familiar with the statistical and replication challenges facing science,” they write. (Over the past decade a series of projects have found that the results of many studies in psychology and other fields can’t be reproduced, leading to what has been called a ‘replication crisis.’)

“This [study] is just one tiny brick in the wall and I hope other people get excited about this topic and do more research on it,” Bottesini says.

More on the study’s findings

The study’s findings can be useful for researchers who want to better understand how science journalists read their research and what kind of intervention — such as teaching journalists about statistics — can help journalists better understand research papers.

“As an academic, I take away the idea that journalists are a great population to try to study because they’re doing something really important and it’s important to know more about what they’re doing,” says Ellen Peters, director of Center for Science Communication Research at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Peters, who was not involved in the study, is also a psychologist who studies human judgment and decision-making.

Peters says the study was “overall terrific.” She adds that understanding how journalists do their work “is an incredibly important thing to do because journalists are who reach the majority of the U.S. with science news, so understanding how they’re reading some of our scientific studies and then choosing whether to write about them or not is important.”

The study, conducted between December 2020 and March 2021, is based on an online survey of journalists who said they at least sometimes covered science or other topics related to health, medicine, psychology, social sciences, or well-being. They were offered a $25 Amazon gift card as compensation.

Among the participants, 77% were women, 19% were men, 3% were nonbinary and 1% preferred not to say. About 62% said they had studied physical or natural sciences at the undergraduate level, and 24% at the graduate level. Also, 48% reported having a journalism degree. The study did not include the journalists’ news reporting experience level.

Participants were recruited through the professional network of Christie Aschwanden, an independent journalist and consultant on the study, which could be a source of bias, the authors note.

“Although the size of the sample we obtained (N = 181) suggests we were able to collect a range of perspectives, we suspect this sample is biased by an ‘Aschwanden effect’: that science journalists in the same professional network as C. Aschwanden will be more familiar with issues related to the replication crisis in psychology and subsequent methodological reform, a topic C. Aschwanden has covered extensively in her work,” they write.

Participants were randomly presented with eight of 22 one-paragraph fictitious social and personality psychology research summaries with fictitious authors. The summaries are posted on Open Science Framework, a free and open-source project management tool for researchers by the Center for Open Science, with a mission to increase openness, integrity and reproducibility of research.

For instance, one of the vignettes reads:

“Scientists at Harvard University announced today the results of a study exploring whether introspection can improve cooperation. 550 undergraduates at the university were randomly assigned to either do a breathing exercise or reflect on a series of questions designed to promote introspective thoughts for 5 minutes. Participants then engaged in a cooperative decision-making game, where cooperation resulted in better outcomes. People who spent time on introspection performed significantly better at these cooperative games (t (548) = 3.21, p = 0.001). ‘Introspection seems to promote better cooperation between people,’ says Dr. Quinn, the lead author on the paper.”

In addition to answering multiple-choice survey questions, participants were given the opportunity to answer open-ended questions, such as “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?”

Bottesini says those responses illuminated how science journalists analyze a research study. Participants often mentioned the prestige of the journal in which it was published or whether the study had been peer-reviewed. Many also seemed to value experimental research designs over observational studies.

Considering statistical significance

When it came to considering p-values, “some answers suggested that journalists do take statistical significance into account, but only very few included explanations that suggested they made any distinction between higher or lower p values; instead, most mentions of p values suggest journalists focused on whether the key result was statistically significant,” the authors write.

Also, many participants mentioned that it was very important to talk to outside experts or researchers in the same field to get a better understanding of the finding and whether it could be trusted, the authors write.

“Journalists also expressed that it was important to understand who funded the study and whether the researchers or funders had any conflicts of interest,” they write.

Participants also “indicated that making claims that were calibrated to the evidence was also important and expressed misgivings about studies for which the conclusions do not follow from the evidence,” the authors write.

In response to the open-ended question, “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?” some journalists wrote they checked whether the study was overstating conclusions or claims. Below are some of their written responses:

• “Is the researcher adamant that this study of 40 college kids is representative? If so, that’s a red flag.”
• “Whether authors make sweeping generalizations based on the study or take a more measured approach to sharing and promoting it.”
• “Another major point for me is how ‘certain’ the scientists appear to be when commenting on their findings. If a researcher makes claims which I consider to be over-the-top about the validity or impact of their findings, I often won’t cover.”
• “I also look at the difference between what an experiment actually shows versus the conclusion researchers draw from it — if there’s a big gap, that’s a huge red flag.”

Peters says the study’s findings show that “not only are journalists smart, but they have also gone out of their way to get educated about things that should matter.”

What other research shows about science journalists

A 2023 study, published in the International Journal of Communication, based on an online survey of 82 U.S. science journalists, aims to understand what they know and think about open-access research, including peer-reviewed journals and articles that don’t have a paywall, and preprints. Data was collected between October 2021 and February 2022. Preprints are scientific studies that have yet to be peer-reviewed and are shared on open repositories such as medRxiv and bioRxiv. The study finds that its respondents “are aware of OA and related issues and make conscious decisions around which OA scholarly articles they use as sources.”

A 2021 study, published in the Journal of Science Communication, looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of science journalists. Based on an online survey of 633 science journalists from 77 countries, it finds that the pandemic somewhat brought scientists and science journalists closer together. “For most respondents, scientists were more available and more talkative,” the authors write. The pandemic has also provided an opportunity to explain the scientific process to the public, and remind them that “science is not a finished enterprise,” the authors write.

More than a decade ago, a 2008 study, published in PLOS Medicine, and based on an analysis of 500 health news stories, found that “journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms,” when reporting on research studies. Giving time to journalists to research and understand the studies, giving them space for publication and broadcasting of the stories, and training them in understanding academic research are some of the solutions to fill the gaps, writes Gary Schwitzer, the study author.

Advice for journalists

We asked Bottesini, Peters, Aschwanden and Tamar Wilner, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, who was not involved in the study, to share advice for journalists who cover research studies. Wilner is conducting a study on how journalism research informs the practice of journalism. Here are their tips:

1. Examine the study before reporting it.

Does the study claim match the evidence? “One thing that makes me trust the paper more is if their interpretation of the findings is very calibrated to the kind of evidence that they have,” says Bottesini. In other words, if the study makes a claim in its results that’s far-fetched, the authors should present a lot of evidence to back that claim.

Not all surprising results are newsworthy. If you come across a surprising finding from a single study, Peters advises you to step back and remember Carl Sagan’s quote: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

How transparent are the authors about their data? For instance, are the authors posting information such as their data and the computer codes they use to analyze the data on platforms such as Open Science Framework, AsPredicted, or The Dataverse Project? Some researchers ‘preregister’ their studies, which means they share how they’re planning to analyze the data before they see them. “Transparency doesn’t automatically mean that a study is trustworthy,” but it gives others the chance to double-check the findings, Bottesini says.

Look at the study design. Is it an experimental study or an observational study? Observational studies can show correlations but not causation.

“Observational studies can be very important for suggesting hypotheses and pointing us towards relationships and associations,” Aschwanden says.

Experimental studies can provide stronger evidence toward a cause, but journalists must still be cautious when reporting the results, she advises. “If we end up implying causality, then once it’s published and people see it, it can really take hold,” she says.

Know the difference between preprints and peer-reviewed, published studies. Peer-reviewed papers tend to be of higher quality than those that are not peer-reviewed. Read our tip sheet on the difference between preprints and journal articles.

Beware of predatory journals. Predatory journals are journals that “claim to be legitimate scholarly journals, but misrepresent their publishing practices,” according to a 2020 journal article, published in the journal Toxicologic Pathology, “Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them.”

2. Zoom in on data.

Read the methods section of the study. The methods section of the study usually appears after the introduction and background section. “To me, the methods section is almost the most important part of any scientific paper,” says Aschwanden. “It’s amazing to me how often you read the design and the methods section, and anyone can see that it’s a flawed design. So just giving things a gut-level check can be really important.”

What’s the sample size? Not all good studies have large numbers of participants but pay attention to the claims a study makes with a small sample size. “If you have a small sample, you calibrate your claims to the things you can tell about those people and don’t make big claims based on a little bit of evidence,” says Bottesini.

But also remember that factors such as sample size and p-value are not “as clear cut as some journalists might assume,” says Wilner.

How representative of a population is the study sample? “If the study has a non-representative sample of, say, undergraduate students, and they’re making claims about the general population, that’s kind of a red flag,” says Bottesini. Aschwanden points to the acronym WEIRD, which stands for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic,” and is used to highlight a lack of diversity in a sample. Studies based on such samples may not be generalizable to the entire population, she says.

Look at the p-value. Statistical significance is both confusing and controversial, but it’s important to consider. Read our tip sheet, “5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance,” to better understand it.

3. Talk to scientists not involved in the study.

If you’re not sure about the quality of a study, ask for help. “Talk to someone who is an expert in study design or statistics to make sure that [the study authors] use the appropriate statistics and that methods they use are appropriate because it’s amazing to me how often they’re not,” says Aschwanden.

Get an opinion from an outside expert. It’s always a good idea to present the study to other researchers in the field, who have no conflicts of interest and are not involved in the research you’re covering and get their opinion. “Don’t take scientists at their word. Look into it. Ask other scientists, preferably the ones who don’t have a conflict of interest with the research,” says Bottesini.

4. Remember that a single study is simply one piece of a growing body of evidence.

“I have a general rule that a single study doesn’t tell us very much; it just gives us proof of concept,” says Peters. “It gives us interesting ideas. It should be retested. We need an accumulation of evidence.”

Aschwanden says as a practice, she tries to avoid reporting stories about individual studies, with some exceptions such as very large, randomized controlled studies that have been underway for a long time and have a large number of participants. “I don’t want to say you never want to write a single-study story, but it always needs to be placed in the context of the rest of the evidence that we have available,” she says.

Wilner advises journalists to spend some time looking at the scope of research on the study’s specific topic and learn how it has been written about and studied up to that point.

“We would want science journalists to be reporting balance of evidence, and not focusing unduly on the findings that are just in front of them in a most recent study,” Wilner says. “And that’s a very difficult thing to as journalists to do because they’re being asked to make their article very newsy, so it’s a difficult balancing act, but we can try and push journalists to do more of that.”

5. Remind readers that science is always changing.

“Science is always two steps forward, one step back,” says Peters. Give the public a notion of uncertainty, she advises. “This is what we know today. It may change tomorrow, but this is the best science that we know of today.”

Aschwanden echoes the sentiment. “All scientific results are provisional, and we need to keep that in mind,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything, but it’s very important that we don’t overstate things.”

Authors of a study published in PNAS in January analyzed more than 14,000 psychology papers and found that replication success rates differ widely by psychology subfields. That study also found that papers that could not be replicated received more initial press coverage than those that could. 

The authors note that the media “plays a significant role in creating the public’s image of science and democratizing knowledge, but it is often incentivized to report on counterintuitive and eye-catching results.”

Ideally, the news media would have a positive relationship with replication success rates in psychology, the authors of the PNAS study write. “Contrary to this ideal, however, we found a negative association between media coverage of a paper and the paper’s likelihood of replication success,” they write. “Therefore, deciding a paper’s merit based on its media coverage is unwise. It would be valuable for the media to remind the audience that new and novel scientific results are only food for thought before future replication confirms their robustness.”

Additional reading

Uncovering the Research Behaviors of Reporters: A Conceptual Framework for Information Literacy in Journalism
Katerine E. Boss, et al. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, October 2022.

The Problem with Psychological Research in the Media
Steven Stosny. Psychology Today, September 2022.

Critically Evaluating Claims
Megha Satyanarayana, The Open Notebook, January 2022.

How Should Journalists Report a Scientific Study?
Charles Binkley and Subramaniam Vincent. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, September 2020.

What Journalists Get Wrong About Social Science: Full Responses
Brian Resnick. Vox, January 2016.

From The Journalist’s Resource

8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free

5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance

5 Common Research Designs: A Quick Primer for Journalists

5 Tips for Using PubPeer to Investigate Scientific Research Errors and Misconduct

Percent Change versus Percentage-Point Change: What’s the Difference? 4 Tips for Avoiding Math Errors

What’s Standard Deviation? 4 Things Journalists Need to Know

The post How do science journalists decide whether a psychology study is worth covering? appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Journalists collect a lot of stuff while reporting, especially for big stories and projects: interviews, documents, research papers, articles. It can be overwhelming at times.

Academics too must collect a large number of documents. They use a variety of tools to organize their work, some of which journalists can also use to organize materials. 

During a panel at the 2023 Association of Health Care Journalists conference in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Gosztyla, a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California San Diego, shared her organizational approach as a scientist, which journalists can easily adopt. She’s the authors of 2022 Nature career columns, “How to Find, Read and Organize Papers” and “How to Manage Your Time as a Researcher.”

Below is a list of tips and tools that Gosztyla shared during the panel.

1. Find related research with literature mapping tools.

When journalists report on a new study, it’s important to consider where that study fits into the larger body of research.

Pubmed and Google Scholar are go-to research platforms to find academic research. But they’re not the most efficient tools for finding research related to a specific academic study.

A better approach is using literature mapping tools, which show the connection between research papers.

“Imagine papers like nodes in a network,” Gosztyla said. “Each paper will cite other papers, and what you can do is make a giant map of all the papers in a specific subject area. And then you can see the hubs — what are the papers that everyone cites that you should probably read.”

Some of the popular literature mapping tools, which offer free versions, include ResearchRabbit, Inciteful, Connected Papers and Litmaps.

2. Stay on top of current research with RSS feeds.

Many journalists, especially those who write about academic research, subscribe to journal email lists. But that may not be the best option for organizing research.

“It kind of overwhelms your inbox after a while,” said Gosztyla.

Another common method is setting up keyword email alerts. Both Pubmed and Google Scholar let you set up email alerts for specific keywords. But that too can crowd your email inbox.

Gosztyla’s solution is using an RSS feed reader.

RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” An RSS feed reader — or RSS feed aggregator — gets all the new articles or studies published on a website and brings them together in a timeline that you can quickly scroll through.

Many websites have RSS feeds. Once you have a link for the RSS feed, you can then add it to a free or paid RSS feed reader.

Here’s a good explainer by Lifewire on how to find RSS feeds and add it to a reader.

Gosztyla spends a few minutes every morning scrolling through her RSS feed reader — her favorite is Feedly — to check for new published research in her field.

This August 2022 article from Wired lists some of the more popular RSS feed readers.

3. Use research management software to file your research.

There are several free online tools that can help you store what you find during your research instead having dozens of open tabs on your browser.

A popular tool developed by and for journalists is DocumentCloud, where you can upload documents, search the text, annotate, extract data, redact and edit.

Another option, popular among academics, is Zotero. It’s a free, open-source reference management tool and can store and organize your research material, including PDF files.

You can use Zotero in a browser, but for a more powerful experience, download it and install the Zotero plugin for your browser. When you come across a study or article that you want to save, click the plugin. It will save the item to your desired Zotero folder. You can create many folders and subfolders, and also share folders. You can also highlight and annotate PDFs.

“If you’re not using a reference manager, I highly, highly recommend them,” said Gosztyla.

You can integrate Zotero to several apps and programs, including, Word, Google Docs and literature mapping tools like ResearchRabbit.

Some of the alternatives to Zotero include, Mendeley, EndNote, RefWorks and Sciwheel.    

4. Routinely read your research pile.

To stay on top of what you’re collecting, Gosztyla offered this advice:

Block out a time each week, like two hours on Fridays, to read. If you have a big pile, maybe devote a couple of days to reading.

And decide how you’re going to spend that reading time: are you going to devote it to do a deep dive, or just scan what you’ve collected, take notes and decide what to keep and what to toss.

“Maybe it’s your routine that every week you buy yourself a nice cup of coffee. You go to a certain cafe and you just read,” Gosztyla said. “So find a routine that you really look forward to and it’s something you want to do.”

5. Don’t forget to take notes while reading documents.

“Don’t ever read without highlighting or taking notes,” Gosztyla said. “Otherwise, you will forget it. I guarantee it.”

Write a small note, a blurb, on the material you read to remind you of its main takeaways and where it fits into your project. Do you need to email or interview the author with follow-up questions? Or read the authors’ previous work? Make a note of those.

In the next step, you’ll learn about organizing those notes.

6. You have collected. You have read. Now organize your work in a database.

Research management software can help you organize your documents, but it’s helpful to create a database of what you’ve collected, your tasks for each item, and maybe a summary and key points. You can use Google Sheets of Microsoft Excel to create your list.

If you want something other than a classic spreadsheet, you can try web applications like Notion.

Notion is a powerful program, which Gosztyla described as a “multi-use database tool.” Notion describes itself as an all-in-one workspace. You can use it to organize your research, manage projects and tasks, note-taking and even your daily journals. You can also integrate Notion with many other apps and tools.

It has a steep learning curve. Give yourself time to learn to use it before integrating it into your workflow. Notion has tutorials on YouTube and a wiki page. Gosztyla recommended Thomas Frank Explains YouTube tutorials. Frank is an author, YouTuber, and Notion expert.

Some alternatives to Notion include Airtable, Trello and Coda.

7. Go one step further with automation tools.

If you want to go a step further in your Notion journey, you can link a Zotero folder to Notion with a tool called Notero. Every time you add an item to your Zotero folder, it populates your Notion database.

Notion has many templates you can choose from. Or you can use Gosztyla’s template.

You can automate and integrate other apps too, to create a better workflow for your work. Some of the popular options are IFTTT — Short for If This Then That — which integrates apps, devices and services to create automated workflows, and Zapier, which connects web applications and allows users to create automated workflows.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to use all the tools listed above.

“Take the pieces that work for you and apply them to your life,” advised Gosztyla.

If you want to share a tool that’s helped you organize your research, you can reach me at naseem_miller@hks.harvard.edu. You can reach Gosztyla on Twitter @MayaGosztyla.

The post Organizing your research: A scientist’s tips for journalists appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

You may have heard the term “trauma-informed” in the context of health care, education and, more recently, journalism. In general, being trauma-informed means recognizing that trauma is common and people may have experienced serious trauma at some point in their lives.

Trauma-informed practices first took shape in medicine, after the medical community began to understand trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other fields, such as education and law, have also been discussing trauma-informed practices.

“Trauma-informed journalism” is a relatively new term, even though covering trauma — ranging from storms and fires to sexual assaults and homicides to mass shootings and wars — has always been a part of journalists’ work.

Trauma-informed journalism can mean different things to different people, says Tamara Cherry, who worked as a crime reporter for nearly 15 years and is the author of upcoming book, “The Trauma Beat: Victims, Survivors & the Journalists Who Tell Their Stories,” slated for publication in Spring 2023.

“Trauma-informed journalism means understanding trauma, understanding what a trauma survivor is experiencing before you show up at their door, and understanding how your actions [as a journalist] will impact them after you pack up and leave,” says Cherry. “It’s also about creating the safe and predictable spaces. It’s about forgetting all the rules that we usually abide by when we’re interviewing school board officials and politicians and recognizing that when it comes to trauma, we need to be treating our interview subjects differently.”

Discussions about trauma-informed journalism are becoming more common due to a confluence of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and an increased hostility toward journalists. Together, these elements “have really made it clear that for journalists to do their jobs, they need to understand trauma more, so that they can tell better stories,” says Elana Newman, research director at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at Columbia University and McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa.

This explainer and tip sheet on trauma-informed journalism is based on a review of several reliable sources on trauma-informed reporting and interviews with Newman of the Dart Center, and Cherry, founder of Pickup Communications PR agency, which provides services and tools for victims and survivors of traumatic events, the journalists who cover their stories and the criminal justice sector. We use The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism as our source for defining trauma-related terminology.

“Trauma-informed journalism means understanding trauma, understanding what a trauma survivor is experiencing before you show up at their door, and understanding how your actions [as a journalist] will impact them after you pack up and leave.”

Tamara Cherry

1. Understand that trauma impacts the brain, including the memory and the ability to vocalize events as they happened.

Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that are physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening to an individual, and have “lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being,” according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Trauma can significantly affect a person’s perception and judgment. When faced with traumatic situations, the brain can go into survival mode and people can suddenly feel and behave differently from their normal selves. “That’s why eyewitnesses to traumatic events are notoriously unreliable. It’s also why even seasoned journalists at moments of high emotion can sometimes get it wrong,” according to the Dart Center’s “Trauma & Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors & Managers.”

Trauma impacts the brain, memories and a person’s ability to vocalize their stories, says Cherry. Immediately after a tragedy, “we as journalists are asking people to tell their stories, when quite often they literally can’t,” she says. “So, we might think that we’re getting their story, but really, we’re getting whatever version of their story that their brain is coming up with in the moment.” 

But months down the road, when the sources have had time to heal a little and they’re not in fight or flight mode, we might actually get a more accurate story, Cherry says.

2. When getting informed consent to tell a trauma survivor’s story, err on the side of overexplaining.

In the context of trauma-informed reporting, informed consent means informing your sources about the nature of your story and having their consent to use their name and report on their experiences. While this is an important aspect of reporting many stories, trauma-informed reporting requires journalists to err on the side of overexplaining.  

“Don’t assume [sources] know what terms like ‘on the record’ or ‘on background’ mean. If that’s something you’re discussing, make sure to be extremely clear about how they will or won’t be identified,” writes journalist Alice Wilder in “Trauma Informed Reporting,” published for Transom, a nonprofit organization that brings new voices and ideas to public broadcasting via workshops and its website.

Give your sources the option to review their quotes or even to change their mind about being quoted before a story is published.

In writing her book, Cherry allowed the people she surveyed and interviewed — including more than 100 trauma survivors — to review the parts in which they were quoted or where their stories were used to ensure their continued consent and accuracy of the survivors’ accounts after her initial interview.

“I knew enough about trauma to really appreciate the weight of responsibility that I had to get this right and to not cause further harm,” she says. “I wanted them to be able to review their excerpt, but I didn’t want it to leave them in a dark place. I wanted it to leave them in a better place.”

“Don’t assume [sources] know what terms like ‘on the record’ or ‘on background’ mean. If that’s something you’re discussing, make sure to be extremely clear about how they will or won’t be identified.”

Alice Wilder

3. Give power to survivors during the interview and storytelling process.

Journalists are trained not to let sources pick which questions they want to answer, see the questions ahead of the interview or the story before it’s published. But when it comes to interviewing survivors of trauma, it’s OK to break those rules. Let your sources know that they have control of the situation.

“One simple way to raise their comfort level is by not pushing any questions that they are not prepared to answer,” writes Maggie Doheny in her article “Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Journalism,” published by the Reynolds Journalism Institute in December 2021.

The Dart Center’s guide, “Tragedies & Journalists,” has five tips for interviewing victims of trauma:

• Always treat victims with dignity and respect.
• Clearly identify yourself.
• Never say “I understand” or “I know how you feel.”
• Don’t overwhelm your source with the hardest questions first.
• If you receive a harsh reaction, leave a number or your card and explain that survivors can contact you if they want to talk later.

In the aftermath of a tragedy, prepare yourself for a wide range of responses from survivors. “Bear in mind the emotional impact of what has happened. Approach people with care, respect and kindness. Take a moment to introduce yourself, make eye contact and explain why you would like to talk to them. Take it slowly and don’t rush — however chaotic the circumstances. Don’t just stuff a microphone in someone’s face and expect an interview,” according to the Dart Center’s trauma and journalism guide.  

“Never ask that most overused and least effective of journalistic questions: ‘How do you feel?’ You may get tears in response, but you’re not likely to get a coherent, useful or meaningful answer. ‘How do you feel?’ is the one question survivors and victims consistently say they find the most distressing and inappropriate. Better options include: ‘How are you now?’ or ‘How did you experience that?’ or ‘What do you think about …?’” according to the Dart Center’s trauma and journalism guide.  

“Opt for open-ended questions and let subjects know that they’re not required to answer questions,” advises Wilder in her Transom article. “Instead of ‘Start at the beginning’ or other chronological based questions ask, ‘Where would you like to begin?’ or ‘Would you tell me what you are able to remember about your experience?'”

Wilder also advises against questioning why your source is emotional: “Even if the traumatic event was long ago, or if it doesn’t seem ‘that bad’ to you, their reaction should be respected,” she write. She also advises against saying “I understand what you’re going through” or “I know how you feel.”

Ask survivors what they would like to achieve in telling their story, advises Cherry.

And if you’re producing a podcast, video, or a printed story about a crime or tragedy that happened in the past, make sure the survivors are aware of it and are extended the opportunity to include their voice and be part of the process. “Because if they’re not, then they could really feel like we are talking about them behind their back,” says Cherry. “Or they can be surprised by it because they might not even know [the podcast/show/story] is happening.”

“‘How do you feel?’ is the one question survivors and victims consistently say they find the most distressing and inappropriate. Better options include: ‘How are you now?’ or ‘How did you experience that?’ or ‘What do you think about …?'”

Dart Center’s Trauma & Journalism: A Guide For Journalists, Editors & Managers

4. Have a plan for your interviews.

If you’re interviewing a trauma survivor, think about how you’re caring for them before, during and after the interview.

Let survivors pick the place of the interview, so they can feel safe. Tell survivors what questions you’re planning to ask, Cherry writes in her tip sheet. Ask if there are questions you should avoid.

During the interview, make sure survivors aren’t reliving the event. Find out if they want to take a break.

At then end of the interview, thank your sources and let them how their interview will be used and when to expect the story, advises journalist and author Jo Healey in “Reporting on Coronavirus: Handling Sensitive Remote Interviews,” published in 2020 on the Dart Center’s website.

5. Don’t forget about your own mental well-being.

Over the years, research has shown that journalists’ job can affect their mental health.

Depending on their beats or work locations, 4% to 59% of journalists have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to the Dart Center.

Journalists should be aware of signs of trouble, which include inability to concentrate, feeling on edge or numb, or inability to feel compassion for sources, Newman explained in a 2021. Other signs include inability to sleep, feeling angry, or excessive use of alcohol.

Here are five self-care tips from the Dart Center’s 2009 guide, “Tragedies & Journalists“:

• Know your limits.
• Take breaks.
• Find a friend or colleague who is a good listener.
• Find a hobby, exercise, spend time with family and friends.
• Seek counseling if you feel overwhelmed.

Newman also shared self-care tips for journalists in 2021, which we summarized in “Self-care tips for journalists — plus a list of several resources.”

Recommended reading

• “The Dart Center Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism,” Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, June 2021.
• “Trauma & Journalism: A Guide for Journalists, Editors & Managers,” Dart Center, 2007.
• “Tragedies & Journalists,” a 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Trauma-Informed Journalism: Tips for Telling Important Stories, Better,” Tamara Cherry. April 2022.
• “Trauma Informed Reporting,” Alice Wilder. Transom.org, March 2021.
• “Trauma-Informed Interviewing: Techniques from a Clinician’s Toolkit,” Kate Porterfield. Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, November 2019.
• “Best practices for trauma-informed journalism,” Maggie Doheny. Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, December 2021.
• “A training session on trauma-informed reporting,” Nicole Froio. Hosted by The International journalists’ Network, December 2021.
• “Keep these seven lessons in mind when interviewing trauma survivors,” Lilly Dayton. Center for Health Journalism.
• “Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories,” Jo Healey, July 2019.
• “Weathering the Trauma Storms: Developing Interviewing Techniques,” by Gavin Rees. Dart Center, June 2007.
• “Covering Children and Trauma,” Ruth Teichroeb. Dart Center, February 2009.
• “Resources: Reporting on Refugees and Migration Through the Eyes of Young Children,” Dart Center, September 2019.
• “Reporting on Sexual Violence in Conflict,” Dart Centre Europe.
• “How working with sexual assault survivors changed the way I think about journalism,” Samantha Caiola. Center for Health Journalism.
• “Working with Traumatic Imagery,” Dart Center, August 2014.
• “Reporting on coronavirus: Handling sensitive remote interviews,” Jo Healey. Dart Center, April 2020.
• “Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others” by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk, May 2009.
• “Journalism and Vicarious Trauma: A Guide for Journalists, Editors and News Organizations,” by Sam Dubberley and Michele Grant. First Draft, April 2017.
• “Resources for Journalists Coping With Trauma,” Dart Center, June 2021.
• “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, September 2015.
• Journalism and Trauma, a free course on how traumatic stress affects victims and how to interview trauma victims with compassion and respect, offered by Poynter.

The post Trauma-informed journalism: What it is, why it’s important and tips for practicing it appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Economic research regularly touches almost every facet of life. Economists aren’t just about dollars and cents and supply and demand — they study income inequality and homelessness, lead exposure and public health, financing for higher education institutions and how the effects of historical racism ripple through time, to name a few intersectional topics.

If you cover business — or even that’s not your regular beat — you know that you might be covering sales tax holidays one minute and Main Street revitalization programs the next. If there’s an economics topic you’re rusty on, you’re going to want to check out what the research says at The Journalist’s Resource — and also see what academic researchers themselves have to say via our friends at Econofact.

Econofact is a nonpartisan online publication out of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. Their bread-and-butter content consists of memos written by academic economic researchers, usually about their own work. The memos begin with a straightforward introduction of an issue, like inflation, a few quick research-based facts about the topic, followed by the authors’ interpretation of their findings.

A small team led by Michael Klein, an international economics professor at Tufts, and managing editor Miriam Wasserman strive to make the memos accessible to readers who don’t have a doctoral or even undergraduate background in economics.

Econofact also produces a podcast — Econofact Chats — that’s landed some big names, including Nobel laureates Paul Krugman, a professor at the City University of New York and New York Times columnist, and Michael Kremer, a professor at the University of Chicago.

I recently spoke with Klein, who founded Econofact in 2017, to learn why he started the project, how journalists can use Econofact, and how economics and business reporters can improve their coverage.

“What we’re trying to do at Econofact is introduce journalists to a wide range of nationally recognized experts who they might not be aware of, but who have done very important work and who oftentimes have been involved in policy and have a lot to contribute to the public debate,” Klein says.

Keep reading for more. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

—

Clark Merrefield: What made you want to start Econofact? I’m also curious about your editorial process, how you choose the writers and topics for the site.

Michael Klein: In the fall of 2016, in the run-up to that [presidential] election, I was disappointed by the level of conversation about a lot of issues, but especially economic ones. After the election, I decided to try to get economists’ voices into the mix to a greater degree, and to bridge the academic-public divide. So, I used a format that I first developed at the U.S. Treasury, when I was the chief economist in international affairs, of writing short memos that were accessible to non-PhD economists and, in this case, non-economists completely. I reached out to a network of friends. We launched in January of 2017 with about 20 people in the network and six memos. By now we have almost 300 memos and more than 120 people in the network.

We try to find topics that are timely — but also a little bit timeless. Topics that are in the news but topics that are going to be of continuing interest. We reach out to people in our network, or people who have been suggested to us, and ask them if they’d like to contribute. People who go into economics often do so because they want to see an improvement in the world. This is a way for their ideas and expertise to get beyond the normal academic audience to whom they usually speak.

All the memos have the same format. We start out with the issue, and then we have a series of bullet points with the facts, and then the authors are allowed to discuss their view of things. But we establish the facts and the issue first. We spend a lot of time editing the memos, to make sure that they’re accessible to a very broad audience. And also, very importantly for us, that they’re non-partisan. We check all the references, and you’ll notice that in the memos there are a lot of hyperlinks because we want to back up everything. The “fact” part of Econofact is a very important part of our name.

Also, beginning in the summer of 2020 I started a weekly podcast series. I’ve been fortunate to have some really prominent economists, including two Nobel laureates, Paul Krugman and Michael Kremer; the last three chief economists of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, Maurice Obstfeld and Olivier Blanchard; and many other economists who are not only experts in their area but who have held very high public positions.

CM: And you’ve had journalists on the podcast too — Ben Casselman at the New York Times and several others.

MK: Yeah, that’s been really fun. So we’ve had Ben Casselman, we’ve had [New York Times economics reporter] Eduardo Porter. And we’ve had three podcasts in which we’ve had a panel of journalists with Heather Long from the Washington Post, Greg Ip from the Wall Street Journal, Scott Horsley from NPR and Binyamin Appelbaum from the New York Times. Every six months or so we get together and have a somewhat longer podcast. In early December we’re going to do the fourth of those, with that same panel, talking about the first year of the Biden administration.

CM: You mentioned that Econofact is nonpartisan. Is there a specific economic school of thought that you personally come from or that the site veers toward?

MK: There is a lot more consensus in economics than one would be led to believe by reading news articles or watching television shows or listening to the radio. Typically, what I’ve seen happen is that [journalists] will try to get both sides of a story, even if on one side of the story there’s a very small minority of people that believe that way. For example, with climate change for a long time, even though scientists were almost universally agreeing that there was in fact evidence of climate change, you’d often see a climate denier representing a deep minority opinion. But, if you didn’t know, you would kind of think it was evenly divided. In many ways there’s not that much controversy, certainly not as much controversy as you might be led to believe, but we do try to get people from across the political spectrum. We’ve been ranked as pretty middle-of-the-road by independent places that have looked at our site.

CM: On the topic of journalistic improvement, in economic news coverage is there a routine error or something that you consistently see happening that you would want to see done differently?

MK: What we’re trying to do at Econofact is introduce journalists to a wide range of nationally recognized experts who they might not be aware of, but who have done very important work and who oftentimes have been involved in policy and have a lot to contribute to the public debate. If you read articles, especially in newspapers, what you’ll find is a small cadre of people that journalists are always turning to. And many of them are very, very good. But there are lots of other very good people who can offer fresh perspectives as well. I can understand why that is. Journalists are operating under very severe deadlines, they have the people that they know. It’s easiest, and especially when you’re under a time deadline, most efficacious to turn to those people. But if they are able to look around a little bit more, they would see that there are other people as well.

Another issue that I have is that there’s often a human interest angle to the stories. Which is important, because it engages people. But it’s also important not to have those anecdotes be a substitute for data. And not to have an unusual or extreme case give the impression that that’s typical. I’d like to see more balance between these human interest aspects, but also a broader perspective of what’s actually going on, and noting whether these individual stories are really typical, or if they might not be a typical case.  

CM: One of the most interesting pieces on your site, to me, which came out in May of this year, was about the timing of unemployment insurance benefits and how they don’t always line up with the financial help that people really need. You also wrote a piece in 2018 that explained Treasury bond yields, which have come up again and again in the last few years. So there’s a lot of really useful stuff on your site for journalists on deadline to quickly get up to speed on whatever topic they might be covering. How do you suggest journalists interact with the site to get the most out of it?

MK: I appreciate that typically economic journalists have to cover a really wide range of topics, and it’s hard to become an expert in any one of them, much less to be conversant in all the ones a journalist will have to cover. One of the goals of our site is to allow people, in a way, to become an instant expert on an area by reading the views of one of the top people in the country who has been spending his or her professional lifetime looking at that issue. A lot of our memos are evergreen. They’re on topics — like you mentioned Treasury bond yields — that will always be coming up. They give a primer on how to understand these issues. Some other topics, like on unemployment insurance, are also evergreen but they have a very timely aspect given the illumination of the extraordinary support of workers that we saw at the end of the summer.

I would suggest journalists could use our site to come quickly up to speed on topics, but also to see who wrote the memo, and to use those people as resources as well. We have a lot of memos on a wide range of topics. If you wanted to look at the issue of trade or immigration we have lots of memos on those topics so you could get a pretty wide-ranging view of some of the important related issues.

We also have some really good podcasts. For example, my interview with Paul Krugman on trade, or with Kadee Russ of [the University of California, Davis] on trade. I think those give a really nice overview, in Krugman’s case on globalization and trade and in Kadee’s case on the link between trade and jobs. There’s a real opportunity in using our site to come quickly up to speed on these important and timely topics, and also to familiarize yourself with a range of experts who you might otherwise not know of who could really be an asset to your reporting.

CM: A lot of times for journalists — and I’m not talking about journalists from national outlets, more reporters at local or regional outlets — sometimes getting access or getting big names to talk can be a challenge. Would you say the folks who write for your site are accessible and willing to talk to journalists from a range of outlets?

MK: Our experience is that’s very much the case. These people aren’t getting inundated with calls from reporters every day and they’re very interested in having their ideas and their expertise used in the public sphere. The people who are writing for us and are on our podcast are people who, by virtue of them writing for us and being on our podcast, want public engagement. And then, they’re willing to go the next step and speak directly to people from the media.

CM: I did a Q&A a few months back with a sociologist and a journalist who collaborated on an investigative project that spanned several years, and they’re probably unique in the closeness that they worked together. But I wonder if you think there are ways that journalists and economists could collaborate directly, whether on a major project or just on the level of getting to better understand what each profession does?

MK: I think there are definite opportunities for synergy. One opportunity would be if a journalist wants to go deeper into a topic, an economist who is an expert in that topic could give the journalist a very powerful framework. Economists are trained to think in very precise, careful ways. I think people who want to delve deeper, to write a popular piece, would benefit from that. And, they can provide ways to parse out, for example, what’s the cause and what’s the effect? Can you really understand what’s going on by looking at some simple correlations, or could those be misleading?

Economists, too, could benefit from speaking more with journalists, especially if they are interested in reaching a wider audience than just what they find in academic journals. Journalists know how to appeal to a wider audience, how to make an argument that resonates with people. At Econofact, that’s what we try to do, although we’re still kind of wonky compared to the typical journalistic article. But we’re a lot more accessible than what you would read in scholarly journals. Even though the material in scholarly journals can have a very important public impact, we offer a way in which the public can have access to that and understand it.

CM: What are some general challenges in communicating economic topics to the public? I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of understanding of how complex the economy is, and how much control a single person, like the president, actually has.

MK: In [the U.S.] there’s a view that government can both do more than it can do and that government can’t do as much as it can. And what I mean by that is, for example, the president is typically blamed or lauded for the performance of the economy. In fact, the president doesn’t have that many levers to pull to affect the economy.

On the other hand, there’s a view that the government can’t do things in this country when, in fact, there is opportunity to, for example, help children in poverty. Or help people learn new ways to work as the economy evolves.

There’s a bit of a paradox that in some ways the government is seen as more powerful than it is in terms of macroeconomic outcomes and in other ways the government is seen as more impotent than it really is in terms of social welfare issues. It’s hard to convey those things. You can talk about how the structure of the economy doesn’t give the president free reign to change the way the macro economy is going. Or, you can compare what’s going on in this country to other advanced countries in terms of support provided to poor children or poor families, or those who might not otherwise have access to higher education. Perhaps those kinds of examples would be useful. Sort of contradicting myself a little bit by saying these anecdotes are important, but I understand that’s how a lot of people look at the world, through stories. It would be great to have those stories that were actually characteristic of broader trends and ideas and help people understand, in a more realistic way, what the role of government could be or should be and when we should be satisfied with outcomes and when we should think that we can do much better.

CM: I’m also thinking about the news stories, opinion pieces and social media where the word “socialism” is mentioned in relation to proposed government spending. I’m not sure people understand what “socialism” means, or maybe it means different things to different people. And that government spending and tax policy have been used to benefit families living in poverty, as you said, and also benefit the wealthy.

MK: There’s a lack of context. It’s probably apocryphal, but people talk about the bumper sticker, “Keep the government’s hands off my social security check.” Journalism could go a long way toward educating the public. As you mentioned, what is socialism? What is capitalism? Nobody really gets rich on their own. There’s a huge infrastructure, both physical and institutional, that enables people to rise within the economy, and there should be an appreciation of that. People benefit from government spending, but you have to tax people in order to pay for spending. There’s a tendency, I think, to isolate things and take them out of context. Then they become these talking points that really don’t make sense and aren’t well understood. There’s a lot that journalists could do to better educate the public in the wider context of what’s going on. Not only in this country, but as this country compares to other advanced economies.

Check out Econofact’s memos and podcasts, along with recent economic coverage from The Journalist’s Resource on state sales tax holidays, the debt ceiling and the link between race, tax delinquency and life expectancy.

The post Econofact: Another great source for getting up to speed on newsy economic policy topics appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

For several weeks, journalists and researchers worldwide have worked long hours to provide up-to-date information on the new coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, trying to help members of the public avoid infection while also scrambling to understand the virus and its possible impacts.

Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology there, teamed up recently to offer news outlets advice on covering the outbreak. Their essay, “How to Report on the COVID-19 Outbreak Responsibly,” appears on a Scientific American blog.

“The profusion of information that keeps emerging about the growing COVID-19 outbreak presents challenges for reporters and the scientists they talk to when researching their stories,” they write in the essay. “Good reporting and science have to distinguish legitimate sources of information from no end of rumors, half-truths, financially motivated promotions of snake-oil remedies and politically motivated propaganda.”

Journalist’s Resource reached out to Hanage to ask for additional guidance to help reporters improve their coverage of the new coronavirus. Below are five tips, based on his suggestions.

1. Choose experts carefully. Receiving a Nobel Prize for one scientific subject doesn’t make someone an authority on all science topics. Nor does having a PhD or teaching at a prestigious medical school.

On deadline and rushing to beat competing news outlets, journalists often ask people who lack specific knowledge of the topic at hand to explain or offer opinions about it. This can be dangerous when covering public health, Hanage says, because audiences rely on news reports to make decisions about their health and the health of loved ones.

“Those quick quotes can be stupid,” he says. “I find it really annoying if I see something ending up in print which I know is going to frighten people or I know I’m going to find myself explaining isn’t true. It makes my heart sink.”

He urges journalists to take time to track down researchers with knowledge and experience in the topic they’re covering. When reporting on new health topics such as the COVID-19, which experts worldwide are scrambling to understand, it’s a good idea to interview multiple researchers.

“I recommend taking the temperature with a few different ones,” Hanage says. “Call four or five independent scientists. If they all say roughly the same thing, then that’s really worth something putting in your reporting.”

He also stresses that journalists should trust — and believe — researchers who say they lack specific knowledge needed to answer a question. “A good [researcher] will say clearly, ‘I don’t know,’ or, ‘That’s not my field of expertise.’ If you asked me detailed questions about how to treat a patient, I’d say ‘Don’t go there,’” says Hanage, who researches the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease.

2. Distinguish what is known to be true from what is thought to be true — and what’s speculation or opinion.
   

As journalists cover the outbreak, it’s important to explain what experts know and what they think they know, based on their experience and an assessment of the evidence, Hanage explains. “For example, we know that this is a beta-coronavirus — that’s a fact,” he says. “However, if you ask me how many people I think it will infect, that is something else.” That said, news reports should rely sparingly on opinions and speculation about issues researchers still know little about — for instance, why children appear less likely to develop severe symptoms of coronavirus disease.

3. Use caution when citing research findings from “preprints,” or unpublished academic papers.

Researchers often publish the results of their studies in scholarly journals. But because the publication process can take months to a year or more, researchers sometimes make their findings public by releasing drafts, called “preprints.”

While preprints of studies on the coronavirus offer the public faster access to the newest information about the virus, Hanage warns journalists to keep in mind that these papers have not undergone peer review — a process designed for quality control through which other researchers with expertise in the topic scrutinize the study and its findings and help prepare the paper for publication in a journal.

The release of preprints focusing on the new coronavirus already has led to “a couple of really bad slips,” Hanage says. One example: several news stories have erroneously reported a link between the COVID-19 and HIV, citing an unpublished paper from scientists in India. The study, posted to the preprint server bioRxiv on Jan. 31, has since been withdrawn.

4. Ask academics for help gauging the newsworthiness of new theories and claims. To prevent misinformation from spreading, news outlets also should fact-check op-eds.

“If something seems extremely surprising or unusual or unexpected, do, of course, check it,” Hanage says. He points to a claim made recently by a British news outlet as something epidemiologists could have debunked — a retired professor of applied math and astronomy told the Express that a meteorite that hit China last fall probably brought the new coronavirus to Earth.

“Contact someone else and say, ‘I heard this and it’s kind of surprising,’” Hanage suggests. “If you call me up and I just sputter and laugh and say, ‘You’re going to look like an idiot,’ then you should probably pause before you publish it.”

For the same reason, newsrooms should fact check op-eds. A recent opinion piece in the New York Post argues the coronavirus might be a biological weapon leaked from a Chinese lab. But “there isn’t any evidence for the biological weapon theory at all from a scientific perspective,” Hanage explains. The op-ed, which Hanage calls “opinion dressing itself up in a language of science,” was written by the president of the Population Research Institute, an organization that opposes population control.

5. Read the work of journalists who cover science topics well.

Hanage says these journalists do an “amazing” job:

• Helen Branswell, STAT’s infectious diseases and public health reporter. (Journalist’s Resource interviewed Branswell for our “How to cover an epidemic” tip sheet.)
• Ed Yong, a staff writer who covers science at The Atlantic.
• Carl Zimmer, whose “Matter” column appears each week in The New York Times.

Other resources:

• In an interview with The New York Times, mathematician Adam Kucharski, author of The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread — and Why They Stop, explains some of the numbers behind the coronavirus outbreak, including why it’s tough to estimate a fatality rate for this new virus.
• ProPublica reporter Caroline Chen, who covered the Ebola crisis in West Africa and Florida’s fight against Zika, outlines important questions journalists should be asking about the coronavirus in an explainer piece ProPublica published Thursday.
• The World Health Organization is tracking and releasing updated data on the number of people worldwide who’ve been infected with and died from COVID-19.
• FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, monitors the factual accuracy of statements public leaders make about a range of public policy topics, including the new coronavirus.

The post Covering COVID-19 and the coronavirus: 5 tips from a Harvard epidemiology professor appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Annually, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy awards the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting to a stellar investigative report that has had a direct impact on government, politics and policy at the national, state or local levels. Six reporting teams were chosen as finalists for the 2020 prize, which carries a $10,000 award for finalists and $25,000 for the winner. This year, as we did last year, Journalist’s Resource is publishing a series of interviews with the finalists, in the interest of giving a behind-the-scenes explanation of the process, tools, and legwork it takes to create an important piece of investigative journalism. Journalist’s Resource is a project of the Shorenstein Center, but was not involved in the judging process for the Goldsmith Prize finalists or winner.  “Copy, Paste, Legislate” — a collaboration among The Arizona Republic, USA TODAY and the Center for Public Integrity — was named the winner on March 23.

In the investigative series, “Fleeing Justice,” journalist Shane Dixon Kavanaugh uncovered dozens of cases of Saudi Arabian nationals fleeing the U.S. and Canada after being charged with serious crimes, including manslaughter, rape and possession of child pornography. He also documented a pattern of Saudi interference with their cases, and the fact that federal authorities had known about this practice for at least a decade.

The Saudi government paid bail and hired attorneys to defend nearly all of these young men, most of whom were international college students. In each case, they disappeared before they could be prosecuted or complete their jail sentences. Some were traced back to Saudi Arabia, even after surrendering their passports to U.S. authorities.

The series began when Kavanaugh, a general assignment reporter at The Oregonian since 2017, learned that Portland Community College student Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah had been spirited out of the country while facing charges of first-degree manslaughter, felony hit-and-run and reckless driving. The Saudi Consulate paid Noorah’s $100,000 bail and provided him with an attorney. Shortly before his trial in 2017, Noorah cut off his electronic tracking monitor and vanished.

“Law enforcement officials now say they believe Noorah got an illicit passport and boarded a plane — likely a private carrier — to flee the country,” Kananaugh wrote in an article published in December 2018 and then updated in August 2019. “Despite unknowns in the ongoing investigation, officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals Service are all but certain who helped orchestrate the remarkable escape: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The series prompted U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon to introduce the Saudi Fugitives Declassification Act of 2019, aimed at forcing the federal government to disclose what it knows about Saudi Arabia’s suspected role in helping its citizens escape prosecution in the U.S. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in late 2019.

Journalist’s Resource reached out to Kavanaugh to ask him about reporting the story. We also asked him for tips for doing investigative journalism that initiates positive change. Below are six of his best tips.

1. Form as many source relationships as possible. Include people outside your beat.

“Talk to as many people as you can — all the time,” Kavanaugh says. “You never know when a story like this will fall into your lap.”

He learned about the first case of a Saudi Arabian student fleeing the country during a conversation with a law enforcement source in Portland. “We were actually chatting about something completely different,” Kavanaugh explains. “This person I was talking to, in an offhanded way, mentioned the Saudi Arabian government had helped this guy escape, and he had returned to Saudi Arabia and it was something that had never been reported on or explained before that.”

He continues, “If I had not developed a relationship with this person previously, if I hadn’t been discussing another case they were working on … this person would never have mentioned this to me. One of the things that continues to surprise me about this is how accidental it was.”

The relationship Kavanaugh had built over time with Sen. Wyden and his staff also helped him obtain information he, otherwise, might not have gotten — including tips about new legislation Wyden planned to introduce as a result of The Oregonian series. “That level of trust between that office and me — that was, I think, also very important in the end,” Kavanaugh says. “Because Sen. Wyden ended up doing so much and getting this bill passed that was ultimately signed into law.”

2. When key players in your story are private attorneys, check out the other cases they’re handling.

That’s how Kavanaugh learned the attorney hired to defend Noorah had represented other Saudi Arabian nationals who had been charged with serious crimes.

“A week or so after the first story ran,” he explains, “I was out walking with my kids on a Saturday morning and the thought occurred to me that I should probably go back and look up the other cases that this defendant’s attorney had handled in the state of Oregon. I went home that afternoon and put in [searched online for] this attorney’s name and the first thing I noticed was it appeared this attorney had represented a lot of other Saudi defendants. You could see that in the docket of her cases for the last few years.”

Kavanaugh said that when he looked at the attorney’s cases individually, he discovered that a number of her Saudi clients had outstanding warrants for their arrest because they had vanished from the U.S.

3. Don’t be discouraged if no person or agency is tracking a problem you’re trying to understand. Document it yourself.

No one anywhere appeared to be monitoring or collecting data on the number of foreign nationals fleeing the U.S. while facing criminal charges, Kavanaugh says. So he and his colleagues hunted down that information themselves. They searched news reports and court records nationwide going back decades.

“We identified 25 or 26 of these cases here in the U.S. and a couple in Canada where these young men accused of serious crimes fled the country before being prosecuted,” Kavanaugh says. There’s no way to know, though, whether what Kavanaugh found represents the majority or only a small fraction of the cases that actually exist. “Are we just scratching the surface with the cases we’ve found? A lot of this is sort of the first run at something nobody had ever explored or talked about.”

Such an undertaking involves patience, persistence and assistance from several other journalists, including stringers The Oregonian hired in other parts of the country. Kavanaugh reported one story in partnership with the nonprofit, investigative news outlet ProPublica.

“Getting the documents and sort of being able to connect all the dots — that was a serious challenge,” Kavanaugh says. “Some of these cases we uncovered are 30 years old. They went back to 1988, 1989. … Also, these are cases around the country and not just Oregon. So there were challenges there in reconstructing cases.”

4. Review the entire public record.

Kavanaugh says he follows the same advice that famed biographer and journalist Robert A. Caro received from his boss when Caro became an investigative reporter at Newsday in the 1960s. “Turn every goddam page,” managing editor Alan Hathway told Caro, according to an account he gave The Associated Press in 2019.

As Kavanaugh pored over court filings and other public records, he made sure to read everything — so he didn’t miss any details that, later, could’ve turned out to be important, he says.

He adds that Hathway’s advice was “just one of those things that stuck with me through the series.” He was intent on “making sure there was never any document we could get our hands on that I didn’t make sure to look over every single piece of paper.”

5. Give victims and their families a chance to tell their stories, especially if they haven’t yet spoken publicly about them.

Kavanaugh suggests making investigative stories as much about people as possible.

“In a lot of investigative work,” he says, “sometimes just finding the records or the document by themselves can be enough to tell the story. But to take what those findings are and find the people or the individuals who have been most affected or impacted by whatever it is you’re look into — using their experiences and their voice to tell that story — it just becomes a richer body of storytelling. It allows readers to create a more sympathetic or empathetic bond to the work that you’re putting out there.”

It also gives crime victims and their families an opportunity to be heard. “What came up in this particular series is that some of these people … never got justice,” he notes. “Whether it was the person who was directly harmed by a criminal act or the parent or siblings of these other people, for some of these people — and this is going back 30 years — nobody had ever asked them about it [the incident] or they were never given the opportunity to grapple with it or talk about their experience. And I thought that was an important part of this series.”

6. You probably won’t get all of your most pressing questions answered. Make peace with that reality and know when to move on to the next story.

At a time when newsrooms and their budgets are shrinking, investigative reporters often lack the time and resources they need to pursue all the angles of a story they’d like to pursue. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, they simply cannot nail down some key details.

There were lots of pressing questions Kavanaugh and his colleagues tried to answer with this series, he says. And while they were able to address many, they had to come to terms with the fact that some of the biggest questions would remain unanswered.

“With sort of each of these criminal cases we were looking into, there was a series of questions we were trying to answer, starting with: was this individual who was studying in the U.S. or Canada, were they on a government-sponsored scholarship?,” Kavanaugh says. “Because, in most of these cases, these people were studying in the United States as part of a massive scholarship program that’s funded by the Saudi Arabian government.” Kavanaugh said he also wanted to know: “When they were held, what was bail and who was their attorney and who were they [the attorneys] retained by? And then another question we had among many was whether an individual had surrendered their passport as a condition of their release from jail.”

Kavanaugh continues: “The bigger question is how on earth does a foreign national facing criminal charges in the United States — if they don’t have a passport — get out of the country? We have working theories, but that was something we were never able to nail down.”

It was important, he says, to focus on the parts of the story they could provide. “With this project and this series, I would say there are at least another dozen angles that I would very much like to explore if we had the sort of time and resources to do so,” he said. “We left so many different elements on the cutting room floor.”

Looking for more tips on how to do great investigative journalism? Read how a reporter discovered a government database that concealed millions of reports of medical device malfunctions and injuries. Check out the tips offered by two reporters whose yearlong investigation of the Elkhart, Indiana police department led to the police chief’s resignation.

The post How he did it: Reporter discovers pattern of Saudi students fleeing US amid charges appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

In his testimony before a U.S. House committee last month, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, Michael C. McGarrity, referred to racially-motivated, violent extremist groups as “domestic terrorists.” He explained that violent white supremacists “have been responsible for the most lethal incidents among domestic terrorists in recent years, and the FBI assesses the threat of violence and lethality posed by racially motivated violent extremists will continue.”

His testimony came weeks after a gunman killed a woman and wounded three other adults at a synagogue near San Diego. As he fled, the gunman called 911 and told a dispatcher that “the Jewish people are destroying the white race,” the Associated Press reported. White supremacists, who believe in the genetic superiority of white people of European descent, often target social minorities based on their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Between 1990 and 2018, more than 217 people died in ideologically-motivated attacks by far-right extremists in the U.S., according to the United States Extremist Crime Database, maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. More than three-fourths of these deaths were caused by white supremacists.

White supremacists and other far-right extremist groups are among the greatest threats to U.S. domestic security, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security wrote in an unclassified Joint Intelligence Bulletin in 2017.

To help journalists better understand issues around white supremacy and right-wing extremism, Journalist’s Resource interviewed two experts in the field. We collaborated with Joan Donovan, director of the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, which also operates Journalist’s Resource. We also reached out to Jessie Daniels, a sociologist at the City University of New York who has written two books on white supremacy, White Lies and Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights. Her next book on white supremacy, Tweet Storm: The Rise of the Far-Right, the Mainstreaming of White Supremacy, and How Tech & Media Helped, is forthcoming.

Below, we outline their 10 most compelling tips.

—————————-

1. Be aware that journalists play a role in helping white supremacists and right-wing extremists spread their message. 

“Journalists do have the power to prevent widespread damage in society,” Donovan says. “Like researchers, journalists see themselves as outside society — observing, describing. [But] journalists are very much part of society. They shape how people see events they weren’t witness to and journalists hold immense power in shaping public opinion on extremely volatile public issues.”

A report worth reading is “The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online,” authored by Whitney Phillips from Data & Society, a New York-based research institute with which both Donovan and Daniels are affiliated. It examines the news media’s role in spreading messages of hate.

2. Investigate the funding sources of white supremacy and right-wing extremist groups.

“The big thing reporters are missing is the money,” Daniels says. She wonders how members of these groups can afford to travel across the country and buy clothing or items such as the tiki torches carried at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in late 2017. “No one has ever reported on who paid for that,” she says, adding that she has not seen news coverage on how these individuals pay for server space for online platforms and living expenses. “Some of these people are not employed, so how are they covering living expenses when spending so much time promoting white supremacy?”

3. Don’t portray race-based extremism — or racism in U.S. politics — as new developments. They’ve been around for many decades.

Both Donovan and Daniels stress the need for journalists to understand the history of racism in America and include that context in their stories. “We get locked in this loop of outrage without any [journalistic] analysis, really, and that just feeds an agenda,” Daniels says.

“People keep using the word ‘unprecedented’ to talk about the current political climate,” Daniels continues. “I think there’s a real kind of cultural, historical amnesia in this country among not just journalists, but all people. There is a very short-term memory when it comes to politics. The country is steeped in white supremacy. To not recognize that and not talk about that speaks to an illiteracy about the place in which we live.”

4. Avoid letting white supremacists use their own terms to describe themselves. Call them what they are: white supremacists.

White supremacist Richard Spencer coined the term “alternative right” as the name for an online publication he created to disseminate his ideas, Donovan says. The term, shortened to “alt-right,” has been used to refer to people who embrace white supremacy. She says the terms “alt-right” and “white nationalism” are used to “soften rhetoric about white power and white supremacy.” Both are part of what Donovan calls the “re-branding” of white supremacy. Some journalists accepted and began using the new terminology without questioning it.

When people started calling themselves white nationalists or members of the alt-right, “journalists were not questioning their belief system, nor were they tying it to any other historical antecedent,” Donovan says. “That lack of history meant that this group could successfully rebrand.”

Donovan suggests journalists use their own words to describe these groups. “I don’t think they should err on the side of letting participants self-describe,” she says. “Call it white supremacy.”

5. Consider taking a stance of “strategic silence.”

Far-right groups rely on the news media to help spread their message and recruit new members. For many years, they have held rallies and staged controversies specifically to gain journalists’ attention and set media agendas. “Even the machines of the PR [public relations] world are not as good at gaining attention as white supremacists are,” Donovan explains, adding that journalists are sometimes duped by these groups because they don’t expect them to be as sophisticated as they are. “Some journalists don’t understand these groups run on charisma.”

Donovan recommends newsrooms consider taking a stance of “strategic silence” — avoiding covering white supremacist events and ideas — to reduce public harm. She thinks reporters should even avoid interviewing white supremacists. “I, for instance, will not allow myself to be quoted in an article that quotes white supremacists,” she explains. “They [journalists] shouldn’t be seeking out new material or seeking out the explanations of these white supremacists.”

6. Record your interactions with these sources.

If you do seek out interviews with white supremacists, assume you’re being recorded when in their presence, Donovan says. Journalists also should keep in mind that anything they say or do might be used against them — and presented out of context. Extremists want to be able to embarrass reporters and their news outlets, Donovan says. To defend against this, reporters should make their own recordings.

7. If you must cover the statements of far-right extremists, always paraphrase.

If you interview a white supremacist or other far-right extremist or want to include part of a speech or statement in a story, Donovan recommends paraphrasing. That’s because members of these groups often use code words or numbers in their remarks to signal their ideology to other extremists. Reporters who don’t recognize this coded language might unknowingly include it in their coverage.

Donovan points to a widely criticized New York Times story as an example of what not to do. The reporter, Donovan says, was “quoting the white supremacist and allowing him to shape coverage without critique or examining the language he was using … He [the white supremacist] was using terminology such as ‘Hail Victory’ that nodded to the rest of the neo-Nazi subculture from the New York Times. What’s worse is the Times linked to his website that included a series of conspiracy-laden racist articles and podcasts.”

8. Investigate the role technology plays in amplifying racist messages. Don’t link directly to white supremacist websites and content in your news articles.

Racists have taken advantage of new technologies, including social media and other online platforms, to communicate, coordinate and recruit. Daniels says journalists must realize that extremists have become quite sophisticated in their use of technology to promote their ideology and spread misinformation, including conspiracy theories.

“Understand technology, but also the history of racism to understand the current moment,” Daniels says. “What’s happening with technology and what’s happening with white supremacy — if you only look at one, you’ll miss what’s actually happening.”

Donovan says that technologists who eschew the need for content moderation underestimate the role platforms play in seeding white supremacist content across new audiences.

For example, search engines prioritize returns by the amount of times a website is linked to other sites. Other factors such as click-through rates and the optimization of keywords matter, too. Like other content creators, white supremacists have learned the trade of online marketing and depend on amplification by other influential groups — including news outlets — to ensure their content spreads.

Donovan suggests journalists avoid linking to white supremacist websites as that can unintentionally lead audiences to white supremacist content.

9. Familiarize yourself with the efforts of organizations that advocate on behalf of racial and religious minorities.

To counterweight news stories on extremism and violence, Donovan suggests journalists cover ongoing efforts to fight racism and other forms of hate. “We need to not focus on violence and reactions to it,” she says. “We need to bring attention to the fact that people are always organizing and it’s not just the street fights that are newsworthy.”

Donovan recommends building sources within organizations such as Color of Change, MediaJustice and Muslim Advocates.

10. Understand that white supremacists who perpetrate violence want notoriety. Don’t give it to them.

White supremacist groups use violence to draw attention to their ideas, Donovan explains. Their goal is to inspire others. Before perpetrating mass violence, some will litter the internet with a manifesto and other posts loaded with keywords and references to white supremacist content. To limit the reach of this ideology, some newsrooms have adopted a policy of only publishing the perpetrator’s name once — and never in a headline. These newsrooms also don’t link to manifestos directly.

Looking for more resources on racism and white supremacy? Check out our tip sheet on when journalists should use the word “racist.” We also spotlight research on how “racially conservative” attitudes led white Southerners to leave the Democratic Party. If you have questions about Donovan’s research and the Technology and Social Change project, please send them to manipulation@hks.harvard.edu. 

The post 10 tips for covering white supremacy and far-right extremists appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

As the U.S. prepares for the 2020 census, news outlets nationwide will be working to help the public understand the importance and impact of the once-every-10-years population count.

To help journalists bolster their coverage, we reached out to two experts — a research professor at George Washington University and a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau — to ask them to point out weaknesses in and ways newsrooms can improve their census coverage. They offered great feedback.

Below, we highlight seven key takeaways from our interviews with Andrew Reamer, who’s studying the census’ role in the distribution of federal funds at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy, and John H. Thompson, a statistician who held various positions at the Census Bureau over nearly three decades before retiring in 2017 as its top administrator.

———————-

1. Get a firm understanding of how census data is collected and used before reporting on the implications of an inaccurate tally.

Many journalists don’t realize the complexity of planning and conducting a census. Some don’t realize that many U.S. residents do not fill out and return their census forms and that the Census Bureau has to take other steps to track them down and record them. Thompson says only about 63.5% of households respond. Journalists also don’t understand the role census data play in virtually all areas of American life.

Reamer, who is interviewed often by reporters, says those who aren’t comfortable with numbers tend to have the toughest time covering the nation’s population count. But Thompson says what’s important is that journalists are able to explain complex concepts in terms the average person can understand. “You don’t have to be an expert at math to understand how the census works,” he says.

2. Remember: the census itself does not determine federal funding. Data derived from the decennial census helps create other data sets and those are used to determine how the federal government will distribute money to states and local governments as well as individual households and organizations.

Each year, some 325 federal programs use data derived from the census to distribute more than $900 billion in grants and financial assistance for everything from food stamps and public housing to road construction and tax-credit programs that encourage economic development in low-income communities, according to Reamer’s research.

For details, check out the reports and PowerPoint presentation slides Reamer has created for the project he oversees at George Washington University, called Counting for Dollars 2020. One report, released in May 2019, offers a state-by-state look at the money distributed by the 55 largest federal programs in fiscal year 2016, based on data derived from the 2010 census.

3. Help the public understand that census results are confidential. Federal law prevents the Census Bureau from sharing identifying information.

Census Bureau officials are required to keep all personally-identifiable information confidential until 72 years after it was collected for the decennial census. The bureau cannot share the information with any person or agency, including other federal government agencies. It can only use what people share via their census forms for statistical purposes, Thompson says.

“Some reporters don’t really understand that the census will not give data to anyone,” he says. “Not the FBI. Not the ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. Not any law enforcement authority. Nobody will get the data.”

After 72 years, the National Archives and Records Administration makes those records public.

4. Stop trying to estimate how much federal funding a state loses for each individual person missed by the census. It’s extremely complicated, and there’s not a way to tell the whole story with one number.

“What I tell journalists,” Reamer says, “is you cannot come up with a number that for every person you miss, this is what it’s going to cost you. A lot of [federal] programs are not sensitive to a miscount. For the programs that are sensitive to a miscount — for example, Title I for education … it depends on the cities’ and states’ count of children ages 5 to 17 who are poor. If the census misses 10,000 65-year-olds, it doesn’t affect funding for poor children because it’s the wrong age group. I try to get them to understand that it’s not only how many you miss, but who you miss.”

5. Explain to audiences that the consequences of an inaccurate census count reach far beyond changes in political representation and federal funding.

When journalists cover the census, they tend to focus on how a miscount might hurt communities in terms of losing federal funding and seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, apportioned based on state population. “Journalists don’t fully appreciate all the ways the country relies on an accurate census,” Reamer says. “The journalists tend to want to focus on the glittery bauble and will tend to miss the broader and deeper [implications]. Federal spending is important, but a small part of the economy.”

He and Thompson say the impact is far greater, potentially affecting nearly every aspect of life in the U.S. Two important areas that don’t get much attention from newsrooms: economic development and academic research.

Businesses use census-derived to make decisions about whether and how to invest in a community, including where to open stores and which kinds of goods and services to offer, Reamer says. “The widespread use of data derived from the decennial census by businesses and nonprofit organizations, workers and students, and federal, state and local governments has a substantial positive effect on the vitality of the U.S. economy and the nation’s 6 million private firms,” Reamer testified during a congressional hearing in May.

Employers use census-derived data to glean information about the workforce in different parts of the country. “A factory may use data on education and training to make decisions about whether to open a new location in a certain area,” Thompson says.

Not only do researchers use information collected by the census as a part of their work — for example, to help explain trends — but they also use it to generate nationally representative samples. Policymakers and federal program administrators depend on nationally representative surveys to help them make decisions.

6. Get acquainted with census coverage measurement, or CCM, efforts.

After each decennial census, the Census Bureau goes to great lengths to measure the accuracy of the count as a whole and for subgroups such as black people, children, and people who rent their homes, all of whom have been undercounted in the past. This information helps the federal government gauge the effectiveness of the census and make future improvements. Reamer says it’s a great resource for journalists wanting a “look under the hood” for prior censuses. They should ask for the results of a survey called the Census Coverage Measurement (CCM), previously known as the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation or the Post-Enumeration Survey.

The Census Bureau released its CCM report on the 2010 census in 2012, calling it “an outstanding census” because it had a net overcount of 0.01%, which was found to be statistically indistinguishable from zero. However, many subgroups were undercounted. For example, the 2010 census undercounted 2.1% of the black population and 4.9% of Native Americans and Alaska Natives living on reservations, the report states. The census overcounted non-Hispanic, white people by 0.8%.

7. Watch for a range of problems that could arise before, during and after the census.

While the possibility of adding a citizenship question has dominated news about the 2020 census, Thompson says plenty of issues can discourage residents from participating. “Right now, the big gorilla in the room is the citizenship question and [questions such as] ‘Is the census going to be delayed? Are they going to delay the printing [of forms]?’” he says. “That’s a big deal. But looking ahead, there are other potential issues they [journalists] should be aware of.”

Thompson suggests journalists keep an eye out for these:

• Problems recruiting part-time census workers: The Census Bureau might have great difficulty hiring enough people to help track down residents to collect their information. “The economy is really good right now, so they’re going to have to find a way to get people to take this as a second job,” Thompson says. “In a good economy, it’s going to be hard to recruit a lot of temporary workers. If the economy stays as good as it is, it’s going to make it hard for them.”
• Disinformation campaigns: “There is a good chance there will be a disinformation campaign similar to the 2016 election, but aimed at decreasing participation in the 2020 census,” Thompson says.
• Technological breakdowns: In 2020, residents will be able to complete their census surveys online. Also, census workers will, for the first time, use smartphones and tablets to collect information. Thompson says the Census Bureau probably won’t know for certain whether issues exist until residents go online to self-respond, or fill out forms on their own. “There are going to be some issues that could come up,” he says. “They are going to start doing a huge amount of self-response over the internet and, hopefully, that will work. Hopefully, that won’t be a big issue. But if it is, that’s something they [journalists] will want to report on.”

Looking for research on the U.S. census? We’ve summarized research on how undercounts and overcounts can harm U.S. communities and how adding a citizenship question would depress participation in the 2020 census.

This image, obtained from the Flickr account of jasleen_kaur, is being used under a Creative Commons license. No changes were made. 

The post 7 tips for covering the 2020 US census appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes won international acclaim for his groundbreaking book that looks at what drove dozens of wealthy, successful businessmen to become white-collar criminals. The book is based on years of interviews and correspondence with nearly 50 former executives, including notorious Wall Street fraudster Bernie Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

Journalist’s Resource recently asked Soltes what he learned about conducting interviews — including interviewing convicted criminals from behind bars — while doing research for Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal, published in late 2016.

Soltes shared some tips on building trust and developing a rapport with prisoners and other sources through short, infrequent conversations and written correspondence.  He was only able to talk to Madoff, for example, in 15-minute chunks — one telephone call per week from the medium-security federal prison in North Carolina where he is being held.

While newsroom deadlines often do not allow journalists to take years to work on a project, Soltes’ guidance applies to virtually any type of news story. Below are six great takeaways:

1. Don’t lead with personal questions and questions that probe into the meatiest details of a convict’s crimes. Focus first on developing trust.  

Soltes says he sought frequent, casual interactions with the people he wanted to get to know. At first, they would discuss topics such as financial news andbooks they each had read. After a few months of these conversations, people began to open up, sharing personal stories and volunteering information about their careers, activities and feelings. Soltes says this approach prioritizes “acknowledging and giving a whole lot of respect to the person more broadly and, in most instances, their positive achievements and what they’ve done in their career … acknowledging all parts of their life and the individual.”

“There were people that, in the first conversation, would be very blunt, very open and were able to jump straight to the matter,” Soltes says. “There were other people — if I ever felt like I connected with them, it was a year later. … Some of the people, it would be over the course of a month or over the course of two months. But to really dive down into these matters in less than a week is really unrealistic. In most instances, it’s a couple of months before one is actually developing a rapport.”

2. Have a plan for whether and how you’ll use sensitive information that sources might divulge once they trust you.

Several of the white-collar criminals Soltes interviewed shared information with him that conflicted with sworn statements they had given in court. While Soltes mentions the conflict in his book, he chose not to name those who did this or elaborate on what they shared. “It’s something, the most significant thing,that made me think that they became very comfortable in our conversations — and, in some ways, I think, too comfortable, because they were saying things that were, frankly, not appropriate and could have potential ramifications … They were willing to trust me and to take the time to tell their tale in their view and, in return, I respected that relationship.”

3. If you want prisoners to talk to you, write them a letter.

Finding a prisoner is not difficult. “You just look up their address online,” Soltes says. If the person is in a federal prison, find him or her by using the Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator. You can search by first and last name or, if you have it, other identifying information such as the inmate’s Bureau of Prisons Register Number. Once you identify the correct person, click on the link to the facility where he or she is being held and, there, you will find information on how and where to mail a letter. (Editor’s note: State prison systems operate similar databases.)

“You just write the person,” Soltes says. “How I approached people: I wrote a letter that expressed my interest in speaking with them and my respect for their more constructive contributions — a brief note that, in many ways, was designed not to present my view or opinion, but to spur their curiosity in wanting to see what I was actually interested in. I would always write — and some people might disagree with this — I would always express something constructive and positive about their career.”

4. When interviewing individuals who are incarcerated, choose phone calls over in-person meetings. You can develop a rapport more quickly through four 15-minute phone calls than one hour-long, in-person conversation.

Inmates typically can make short, weekly phone calls. In federal prisons, every call is limited to 15 minutes. While in-person visits are longer, Soltes says phone calls are more useful for building relationships because they are more frequent and also allow some time for reflection between discussions.

“I actually found that prison interviews were not nearly as constructive, because you’re kind of getting one shot and the next shot might not come until months later,” Soltes says. “With e-mail and phone [interviews], you can actually start a dialogue.”

“In prison, if you’re doing something in person, you have a date and time and — if you’re lucky — you have maybe two hours. But you’re not going to establish a relationship with someone. And completing everything you want in two hours — that’s just unrealistic. Even over a couple of weeks of going back and forth for 15 minutes [by phone], doing regular 15-minute phone calls, you have an opportunity to build a sense of rapport with someone in a much more effective manner. … This is something where I think the 15 minutes is more … You want some time for reflection.”

5. Establish a system of checking your biases to limit the impact your relationships with sources could have on your work.

Soltes says he sometimes worried about showing favor toward sources he had gotten to know well over the course of several years. To guard against this, he asked people he knew – including his wife, who is a medical doctor and, therefore, not involved in the finance industry — to read what he had written. “I think this is one of the hardest issues to navigate,” Soltes says. “I tried to be aware that I would never know what these unconscious biases would be doing to my work … My best judge — my wife — actually tends to hold some different views about many of these [white-collar crime] cases, as she read much of my writing and would be a harsh critic in some of these cases. I’d give it to people I know hold very different views of these matters and have them read drafts. I wanted them to see if I was presenting the information in an unbiased way.”

6. If you’re describing someone’s feelings, opinions or mindset, consider letting that person review what you have written to make sure it represents them accurately.

While journalists generally avoid sharing pre-published work, Soltes says it allows sources to clarify or point out errors in the way you’ve characterized them. He shared his writing with the people he interviewed for his book. “In this case, I was not just trying to describe the facts. In my case, I was trying to subjectively describe how they viewed matters both past and present,” he explains. “I wanted them to express in a clear and articulate manner how they viewed the world. I didn’t see the downside to making sure what I was writing reflects that.”

Looking for more journalism tips from academic experts? Check out our tip sheet featuring privacy engineer Dipayan Ghosh, who offers guidance on covering data security and privacy issues. In another recent tip sheet, Dan Schrag, the director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, makes five suggestions for improving coverage of climate change and the environment.

The post Interviewing white-collar criminals: 6 tips from Harvard Business School’s Eugene Soltes appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Science reporting is in a moment of extreme transition: Popular science writing is experiencing a renaissance at precisely the moment that traditional media outlets are jettisoning specialized reporters. This creates tremendous opportunity and tremendous challenges. This course makes sure students are prepared to meet those challenges.

Course objective
This course is designed to acquaint reporters with all aspects of science reporting and writing. It will train participants to view new breakthroughs and discoveries with skepticism and will give students a working knowledge of many of the main areas of science coverage, including the environment, artificial intelligence, and human interaction with technology. There will be lessons on social media, online writing, news and feature writing, and writing long-form narratives.

Learning objectives
The syllabus is designed to strengthen students’ core competencies in several areas:

• Determining what sources and outlets can be trusted to discuss controversial or unproven claims.
• Learning which questions will elicit meaningful responses.
• Understanding that choosing not to cover a story can be just as important an editorial decision as deciding how to cover it.
• Evaluating what type of form a journalist is most comfortable with and seeking out ways to work in that form.

Course design
This course will focus on developing toolkits for evaluating science stories in addition to learning about some specific issues or controversies. It is designed as a workshop course for between 10 and 15 students. An integral part of the course is analyzing and critiquing other students’ work.

Required books

• Deborah Blum, Mary Knudson and Robin Marantz Henig, editors, A Field Guide for Science Writers, 2005.
• William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 1976.
• Elise Hancock, Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing, 2003.
• Darrell Huff, How to Lie With Statistics, 1954.
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, 2011.

Optional books: There will be multiple readings from these books during the semester.

• John Allen Paulos, Innmeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences, 1990.
• Seth Mnookin, The Panic Virus, 2011.

Recommended reading: Depending on the instructor, these may or may not be discussed during the semester. They all serve as excellent illustrations of first-rate science writing covering a variety of topics and styles.

• Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies, 2011.
• David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo, 1996.
• Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839.
• James D. Watson, The Double Helix, 1968.
• Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962.
• Richard Holmes, Age of Wonder, 2010.
• Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980.

Assignments
There will be three shorter written assignments, one oral presentation, and one ongoing writing project tied to a final paper. Students are also expected to comment on their classmates’ writing.

Short assignments
Each short assignment must be done in the style of a newspaper, magazine or blog post. Students can choose which style to employ for each assignment, but they must do all three styles.

• News story of 750 to 1,250 words about a new discovery.
• News story of 750 to 1,250 words about a scientific controversy.
• Feature story of 1,250 to 2,000 about a scientist or a book review of 1,250 to 2,000 words.

Oral presentations
Beginning in week four, one student will “reverse engineer” a science story from that week’s news. These presentations should take roughly 15 minutes and will include discussion of structure, shortcomings and strategies used to draw in readers. Students will let the instructor and their classmates know which article they will be critiquing during the class prior to their presentations.

Final assignment
One longer piece of between 3,500 and 5,000 words. Topics will be finalized by the end of week five. Beginning in week seven, students will maintain a blog and social media discussion about their topic in a way that does not detract from their final project.

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)
The assumption of this syllabus is that the course will meet twice a week. It is also assumed that students will have completed at least one basic reporting class before taking this course.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7
Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13

Week 1: Introduction to science journalism

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Good science journalism should properly convey a sense of wonder and discovery. Lewis Thomas, a physician who became one of the most eloquent interpreters of the natural world, provides a touchstone even today, almost 20 years after his death.

Class 1: Drawing readers into stories about arcane subjects

Readings:

• Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1978: “Lives of a Cell,” “Germs,” “Death in the Open.”
• Roger Rosenblatt, “Lewis Thomas,” New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1993.

Class 2: What is science writing?

Discussion will address whether there is a difference between writing about science and science writing. The second half of this class will be set aside to discuss students’ story pitches for their first assignment.

Readings:

• Field Guide, chapters 1, 4-6: “Finding Story Ideas and Sources,” “Writing Well About Science: Techniques From Teachers of Science Writing,” “Taking Your Story to the Next Level,” and “Finding a Voice and a Style.”
• Ideas into Words, chapters 1-2: “A Matter of Attitude,” “Finding Stories.”
• On Writing Well, chapters 1-7: “The Transaction,” “Simplicity,” “Clutter,” “Style,” “The Audience,” “Words,” “Usage.”

Week 2: Contextualizing numbers and memories

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Pitfalls to avoid when reporting on statistics

Discussion will focus on training students to make sure the crucial questions are being asked and not the ones a given source wants you to focus on. Students should practice communicating complicated numerical data clearly and effectively.

Readings:

• How to Lie with Statistics.
• Innumeracy: Introduction, chapters 1, 4-5.
• Field Guide, chapter 3: “Understanding and Using Statistics.”
• Journalist’s Resource, “Statistical Terms Used in Research Studies; a Primer for Journalists.”

Class 2: How reliable is memory?

Discussion will focus on why it is best to be as skeptical of memory as you would be of data presented out of context. Also, assignment 1 is due in class; essays should be distributed electronically to every member of the class.

Readings:

• Alan Scoboria, et al. “The Effects of Prevalence and Script Information on Plausibility, Belief, and Memory of Autobiographical Events.” Applied Cognitive Psychology. 2006; Vol. 20, 1049-64.
• Tracy Desjardins and Alan Scoboria. ” ‘You and Your Best Friend Suzy put Slime in Ms. Smollett’s Desk’: Producing False Memories with Self-relevant Details.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 2007, 14(6), 1090-95.
• Eugene Subbotsky. “Can Magical Intervention Affect Subjective Experiences? Adults’ Reactions to Magical Suggestion” (PDF), British Journal of Psychology. 2008; 00, 1-22.

Week 3: Science and the public

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Issues facing science journalists and public attitudes about science

Readings:

• Stuart Allen, “Introduction: Science Journalism in a Digital Age” (PDF), Journalism, October 2011 12: 771-777.
• National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, chapter 7: “Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding” (PDF).

Class 2: Improving public understanding of science

Readings:

• Ian Hargreaves, et al. “Towards a Better Map: Science, the Public and the Media” (PDF), Economic and Social Research Council, 2003.
• Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney. “Framing Science.” Science. 2007; 316(5821): 56.

Week 4: The dangerous allure of cognitive biases

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Awareness of cognitive biases

Discussion will focus on being aware of cognitive biases in sources’ and scientists’ work and how to be on the lookout for researchers looking for exactly what they found. Start of oral presentations (one student per class until complete).

Readings:

• Martin Hilbert, “Toward a Synthesis of Cognitive Biases: How Noisy Information Processing Can Bias Human Decision Making,” Psychological Bulletin, March 2012, Vol. 138(2), 211-237.
• Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen Garcia, Norbert Schwarz, and Dale Miller, “Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion from Its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus” (PDF), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 92(5): 821-833.

Class 2: Guarding against cognitive biases

Discussion will focus on guarding against cognitive biases and examining how they may negatively influence reporting and writing. Assignment 2 due in class.

Reading:

• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Week 5: Covering controversy 1: Scientific studies

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: MMR vaccine and autism, part 1

Discussion will focus on one of the most infamous shoddy studies of the past several decades: Andrew Wakefield’s Lancet paper on a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This week’s readings will include contemporaneous critiques of Wakefield’s work. Topic for final assignment due in class.

Readings:

• Field Guide, chapter 2: “Reporting from Science Journals.”
• Andrew Wakefield, et al. “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular Hyperplasia, Non-specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children.” The Lancet, 1998; 351, 637-41 (retracted).
• Andrew Wakefield. “Autism, Inflammatory Bowel Disease and MMR Vaccine” (PDF), The Lancet, 1998; 351(9106), 908.
• M.A. Afzal, et al. “Absence of Measles-virus Genome in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” The Lancet, 1998; 351(9103), 646-47.
• Robert Chen and Frank DeStefano. “Vaccine Adverse Events: Causal or Coincidental?” The Lancet, 1998; 351(9103), 611-12.

Class 2: MMR vaccine and autism, part 2

This week’s readings will focus on later examinations of Wakefield’s work and discussion will focus on the media’s role in perpetuating this “controversy.” It will also look at some of its repercussions. Students should finalize topics for final papers.

Readings:

• The Panic Virus, chapters 8-9: “Enter Andrew Wakefield” and “The Lancet Paper.”
• Jeffrey P. Baker, “Mercury, Vaccines and Autism: One Controversy, Three Histories.” American Journal of Public Health. 2008; 98(2), 244-53.
• Liza Gross, “A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars.” PLoS Biology. 2009; 7(5), e100014-e100026.
• Michael Smith, et al. “Media Coverage of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine and Autism Controversy and Its Relationship to MMR Immunization Rates in the United States.” Pediatrics. 2008; 121(4), e836-e843.

Week 6: Covering controversy 2: Too good to check?

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Morgellon’s disease

Discussion will focus on the psychology, ethics and sociology around illness and false claims.

Readings:

• Brigid Schulte, “Figments of the Imagination,” The Washington Post. January 20, 2008.
• Brigid Schulte, “Post Magazine Live Discussion: Morgellons Disease,” washingtonpost.com, January 22, 2008.
• The Panic Virus, chapter 7: “Help! There Are Fibers Growing Out of My Eyeballs.”

Class 2: Introduction to blogging

Discussion will focus on best practices and techniques for blogging about discoveries, studies and news events.

Readings:

• Recent posts at Nature.com blogs
• Wired Science blogs
• “Cosmos and Culture,” NPR science and society blog
• Discover Magazine blogs

Second assignment due in class.

Week 7: The politicization of science: Climate change, energy

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Informed and uninformed opinions

Discussion will focus on the ways in which social, political and thought leaders impact scientific debates regardless of their scientific standing or savvy. Students should begin to blog and have social-media discussions about subject of final paper.

Readings:

• John A. Krosnick, et al., “The Impact of the Fall 1997 Debate about Global Warming on American Public Opinion,” Public Understanding of Science, 2000, Vol. 9, No. 3: 239.
• William R.L. Anderegg, et al., “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” PNAS, July 6, 2010, Vol. 107, No. 27, 12107-12109.
• Gordon Gauchata, “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010,” American Sociological Review, April 2012, Vol. 77, No. 2, 167-187.
• Robert J. Brulle, et al. “Shifting Public Opinion on Climate Change: An Empirical Assessment of Factors Influencing Concern over Climate Change in the U.S., 2002-2010,” Climatic Change, 2012, Volume 114, No. 2.

Class 2: Climate change impacts and a world in transition

Discussion will continue previous week’s discussion by looking at how the planet is changing for humans, flora and fauna.

Readings:

• “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2012.
• Antonella Zanobetti, et al., “Summer Temperature Variability and Long-term Survival among Elderly People with Chronic Disease,” PNAS, April 9, 2012.
• Hönisch Bärbel, et al., “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification,” Science, March 2, 2012, Vol. 335, No. 6072, 1058-1063.

Note: Social media paper due (instructions in syllabus introduction.)

Week 8: Energy, natural resources and the environment

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Reporting on energy and society

Discussion will focus on strategies for reporting on energy-related subjects with strong policy dimensions and significant implications for sustainability. Further discussion will focus on how to report on social science findings without crossing the line into advocacy. Assignment 3 due in class.

Readings:

• “Fracking, shale gas and health effects: Research roundup,” Journalist’s Resource, Sept. 6, 2012.
• M.A. Palmer, et al., “Mountaintop Mining Consequences,” Science, 8 January 2010: Vol. 327 no. 5962 148-149.
• Bryan Bollinger and Kenneth Gillingham, “Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar Photovoltaic Panels,” August 5, 2012.
• Christopher R. Knittel. “Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector,” American Economic Review, 2012, Vol. 101, no. 7, 3368-99.

Class 2: Biodiversity challenges and a crowded planet

Discussion will focus on how the richness of the natural world is threatened by human expansion and development, and natural resources consumption.

Readings:

• Bradley J. Cardinale, “Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity,” Nature, June 7, 2012, 59-67.
• Samuel K. Wasser, et al., “Influences of Wolf Predation, Habitat Loss, and Human Activity on Caribou and Moose in the Alberta Oil Sands,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, December 2011, Vol. 9, Issue 10, 546-551.
• Anne L. Balogh , Thomas Ryder, and Peter P. Marra, “Population of Gray Catbirds in the Suburban Matrix,” Journal of Ornithology, January 23, 2011.

Week 9: Artificial intelligence

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Basic concepts

Artificial intelligence is one of the areas undergoing enormous advances. This week’s classes will familiarize students with basic concepts and ideas that inform the field. Today’s discussion will address Turing tests and theories about why machines will (or won’t) gain “intelligence.”

Readings:

• A.M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, 1950, 59, 433-460.
• John R. Searle, “Minds, Brains and Programs” (PDF), Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1980.

Class 2: Current issues

Discussion will focus on current issues in artificial-intelligence research and development. Students begin keeping a blog in class.

Readings:

Selections from Understanding Artificial Intelligence, compiled by the editors of Scientific American magazine.

• Kenneth M. Ford and Patrick J. Hayes, “On Computational Wings,” 5-18
• Douglas B. Lenat, “Programming Artificial Intelligence,” 23-29
• Geoffrey E. Hinton, “How Neural Networks Learn From Experience,” 43-59

Week 10: Humans and technology

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Ways to write about science

This week’s classes will examine some of the ways in which general assignment reporters write about science. Today’s class will address three primary sources, two news stories written about one of those studies in particular, and one blog critiquing the news coverage.

Readings: Primary sources

• Aric Sigman, “Well Connected? The Biological Implications of ‘Social Networking’ ” (PDF), Biologist, February 2009, Vol. 66, No 1, 14-20.
• Robert Kraut, et al., “Internet Paradox Revisited,” Journal of Social Sciences, Spring 2002, Vol. 58, Issue 1, 49-74.
• S. Byun, et al. “Internet Addiction: Metasynthesis of 1996-2006 Quantitative Research,” CyberPsychology and Behavior, April 2009; 12(2):203-7.

Readings: News coverage

• “How Using Facebook Could Raise Your Risk of Cancer,” The Daily Mail, February 19, 2009.
• “Online Networking ‘Harms Health,’ ” BBC.com, February 19, 2009.
• Ben Goldacre, “How Arik Sigman Distorts the Scientific Evidence to Mislead You,” Bad Science, February 24, 2009.

Class 2: “Buzz” or irresponsibility?

Discussion will focus on a recent Newsweek cover story. Is this an example of “buzzy” coverage or is it irresponsible journalism?

• Tony Dokoupil, “Is the Internet Making Us Crazy? What the New Research Says,” Newsweek, July 9, 2012.
• Vaughan Bell, “No, the Web Is Not Driving Us Mad,” Mindhacks.com, July 13, 2012.
• Maia Szalavitz, “Does the Internet Really Make Everyone Crazy?” Time.com, July 13, 2012.

Week 11: Story structure and reverse engineering

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: The geometry and solid building blocks of a science story

Discussion will focus on how narrative stories use certain formulas and techniques to advance ideas and arguments.

Readings:

• Peter Hessler, “Interview: John McPhee, the Art of Nonfiction No. 3,” Paris Review, spring 2010, No. 192.
• David Quammen, “Deadly Contact,” National Geographic, October 2007.
• Ideas into Words, chapters 4-6: “Writing: Getting Started and the Structure,” “Writing: The Nitty Gritty” and Refining Your Draft.”

Class 2: Deconstructing the layers of a good science story

Discussion will focus on analysis of a particular story, illuminating the relative simplicity of intellectual architecture that lies behind a long, dense narrative.

Readings:

• Atul Gawande, “Letting Go: What Should Medicine Do When It Can’t Save Your Life?” New Yorker, August 2, 2010.
• Ed Yong, “Deconstructing Gawande: Why Narrative and Structure Are Important,” Discover Magazine blog, August 23, 2010.

Week 12: Types of science writing

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Forms, conventions and science article styles

Discussion will focus on the classic shapes and styles of various types of science articles, and how to select and fit form properly to subject.

Readings:

• Field Guide, “Part III: Varying Your Writing Style.” Includes chapters on “Deadline Writing,” “Investigative Reporting,” “Gee Whiz Science Writing,” “Explanatory Writing,” “Narrative Writing,” and “The Science Essay.”
• Selections from The Best American Science Writing 2012.

Class 2: The fine art of good science writing

Science writing is a demanding intellectual enterprise, but it can also be a high art form. Discussion will focus on what it takes to elevate science reporting and make pieces highly readable.

Readings:

• On Writing Well, chapters 11, 15, 20-23: “Nonfiction as Literature,” “Science and Technology,” “The Sound of Your Voice,” “Enjoyment, Fear, and Confidence,” “The Tyranny of the Final Product,” “A Writer’s Decisions.”
• Selections from The Best American Science Writing 2012.

Week 13: Fact-checking with sources

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: Journalism ethics in complex fields; the journalist-scientist relationship

One of the largest debates in science journalism over the past several years has been whether reporters should share parts of their stories with scientists in their efforts to make sure they understand the issues at hand. The Chicago Tribune‘s Trine Tsouderos became the centerpiece of this discussion after her appearance on a podcast by a Columbia University virologist. Discussion will focus on students’ thoughts about the topic.

Readings:

• This Week in Virology, “Live at ICAAC in the Windy City,” 2011, No. 149, featuring Trine Tsouderos, science reporter for Chicago Tribune.
• David Kroll, “Trine Tsouderos on This Week in Virology: When Do You Fact-Check Article Content with Sources?” Take as Directed, September 19, 2011.
• Seth Mnookin, “Guardian Ends Run of Smart Science Journalism Discussions with Scientists’ Self-Congratulatory Essay about Peer Review,” PLOS Blogs, October 12, 2011.

Class 2: Final thoughts on science reporting, good process and perpetual perils

Wrap-up discussion will summarize key takeaways and guidance for writers in the field. A reporter’s daily information diet bears final scrutiny: The packaging of science — press releases and communications from institutions — are information streams that reporters on the beat should manage and approach with caution.

Readings:

• “Research Chat: Andrew Revkin on Covering and Using Scholarship,” Journalist’s Resource, September 27, 2011.
• Amélie Yavchitz, et al. “Misrepresentation of Randomized Controlled Trials in Press Releases and News Coverage,” PLoS Medicine, September 2012.

_________

A special thanks to Seth Mnookin, co-director of MIT’s graduate program in science writing, for help in writing this syllabus.

The post Science reporting: Covering the environment, technology and medicine appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Health is one of journalism’s most complex and important reporting beats. Health care spending consumes about 17% of the U.S. economy, and the high cost of medical treatment affects everyone sooner or later. This beat touches on politics; economics and resource allocation; medicine and disease; business finances, marketing and sales practices; and consumer regulation and the law. It also involves conflicts of interest not only in the health professions but within the media as well. Someone covering health is expected to be expert in most of these topics and proficient in analyzing the growing amounts of health system data becoming available.

Course objective

This course is designed to acquaint reporters with all aspects of the health beat and teach them how to write compelling narratives about the U.S. system, investigate wrongdoing in health and medicine, and interpret health in political, socio-economic and medical contexts in ways that serve the public interest.

Learning objectives

The syllabus is designed to strengthen students’ core competencies in several areas:

• Finding and analyzing background reading for stories.
• Using observation to augment reporting.
• Analyzing government documents dealing with inspection, enforcement, and regulation of health facilities and other medical enterprises.
• Finding and interpreting data that measure the cost and quality of health care facilities
• Improving interviewing skills.
• Evaluating varied sources of information while connecting the dots for analysis and contextual reporting.

Course design

This course will acquaint students with all domains of health reporting. They include public and community health, the business of health, health policy, reporting on drugs and disease, and consumer health. Assignments will help them develop knowledge in these domains but also strengthen their ability to report and write about them.

Readings

There are three groups of readings for this course: general readings that apply to writing all kinds of health stories; books; and magazine articles or Internet readings that apply to particular class topics. General readings help students with writing and are meant to be suggestions for instructors to assign as optional reading.

Note: There may be more readings suggested for each class than an instructor may want to assign. Instructors may want to select readings based on course emphasis for the semester.

Optional general readings:

• “The Media Matter: A Call for Straightforward Medical Reporting,” L. Schwartz, S. Woloshin, Annals of Internal Medicine, February 2004.
• “A Journalist’s Guide to Writing Health Stories,” Gordon Guyatt et al., American Medical Writers Association Journal, Winter 1999.
• “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell.
• “First a Story…,” Columbia Journalism Review, November 2002.

Books:

• Charles E. Lindbloom, Edward J. Woodhouse, The Policy-making Process; Prentice Hall, 1992.
• Marcia Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It; Random House, 2004.
• Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health; University of California Press, 2007.
• Jill Quadagno, One Nation: Uninsured: Why the U.S. Has No National Health Insurance; Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Theodore Marmor, The Politics of Medicare; Aldine Transaction, 2nd Edition, 2000.
• Institute of Medicine, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System; National Academies Press, 2000.

Chapters to be read from these books are listed for relevant class.

Assignments

There will be four short assignments and one final in-depth story students can do in any medium — print, broadcast or web package. Assignments are as follows:

Short assignments

• An 800-word blog post on the U.S. health system.
• An 800-word blog post comparing health statistics for two communities.
• A 1,000-word story discussing the nursing-home inspection report (Form 2567) for a facility of a student’s choosing and comparing it to data for the facility found on the government’s Nursing Home Compare site and to his or her own observations from visiting the nursing home.
• A 1,000-word consumer story on the topic: “Should you join a clinical trial?”

Final assignment

Students can choose between:

• A story about a hospital using quality and safety data, its marketing efforts, its patient mix, its charges, prices and negotiating leverage — in short, everything a patient would need to know before choosing that hospital.
• A story about the marketing of a controversial drug — one that may have a questionable safety profile or efficacy, high cost or limited use. It will be an examination of how the drug came to be, how it was sold and what it contributes to better health, if anything.

Assignments for in-class discussions

• Week 6: Choose a local hospital and look at how three different rating organizations evaluate it and be prepared to discuss in class. NO WRITTEN PAPER
• Week 7: Examine the disciplinary actions for doctors and nurses in the state and be prepared to discuss the findings in class as well as possible stories. NO WRITTEN PAPER
• Week 9: Choose a widely advertised drug and observe how it is marketed in different media. Be prepared to discuss its side effects, marketing channels, and the ads’ effectiveness in communicating risks and benefits to the public. NO WRITTEN PAPER
• Week 10: Choose a news report of a medical study and be prepared to evaluate it for the class using the criteria from Health News Review. NO WRITTEN PAPER

Weekly schedule and exercises (13-week course)

The assumption of this syllabus is that the course will meet twice a week. It is also assumed that students will have completed at least one basic reporting class before taking this course.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7
Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13

Week 1: Uniquely American health care

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Unlike other developed nations, the United States does not provide a universal right to health care. Instead, it uses a system of private insurance, and health care is a commodity to be bought and sold with minimal regulations. Although the 2010 Affordable Care Act gave more people the right to buy health insurance, it did not guarantee that providers had to accept it. Nor did it mean every American will have insurance.

Class 1: Health care in the American context and the privileged position of business

Discussion: Why we have the system we do and why it is so hard to change. The politics of the Affordable Care Act.

Readings: The Policy-Making Process, all chapters.

Class 2: The best health care in the world?

Discussion: The points of similarity and difference between American health care and other developed countries. Students will be asked to compare and contrast health care in other countries based on the readings and OECD data.

Readings:

• “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care,” The Commonwealth Fund, 2007.
• “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally, 2010 Update,” The Commonwealth Fund, 2010.
• OECD health statistics portal.
• “U.S. and Other Health Care Systems Compared” (PowerPoint), Humphrey Taylor, Harris Poll, April 4, 2012.

Week 2: What makes healthy people and communities

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Many factors determine people’s health, and it’s not necessarily the kind of insurance they have, their genetic predisposition or medicines. The food we eat, the money we have, where we live, our jobs and the stress we experience play a big role in health.

Class 1: The social determinants of health

Discussion: Class takes the population health quiz and discusses answers, then discusses the Whitehall Studies in The Lancet article, stress, job satisfaction and health care inequality.

Readings:

• “Health in an Unequal World,” The Lancet, December 5, 2006.
• “Class: The Ignored Determinant of the Nation’s Health,” The New England Journal of Medicine, September 9, 2004.
• “Inequalities Are Unhealthy,” Monthly Review, Volume 56, Number 2, June 2004.
• “Nobel Winners Live Longer, Say Researchers,” The Guardian, January 17, 2007.
• “Population Health Quiz,” Population Health Forum.

Class 2: Reporting on differences in community health

Discussion: Finding health statistics for various communities, what they tell us, and how to use them.

Readings:

• “The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in County Mortality and Cross-County Mortality Disparities in the United States,” PLoS Medicine, April 22, 2008.
• Students should familiarize themselves with U.S. county health rankings, census data, and databases from The Commonwealth Fund, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and University of Wisconsin.

Assignment due this week: Write an 800-word blog post comparing the U.S. health care system to those of other developed nations. Is the U.S. system “the best in the world,” as some claim? If so, by what measures and for whom? If not, in what way and for whom? Be sure to use supporting data.

Week 3: The public’s health

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

The media often give scant attention to public health unless there is a disease outbreak or environmental disaster. Public health issues generally fall into two groups — traditional public health problems like measles epidemics and newer ones such as obesity and vaccine controversies. Students will learn how to cultivate sources in their local health departments and identify ideas for stories that further public health.

Class 1: Covering disease outbreaks and vaccine controversies

Discussion: Class will examine and critique coverage of the H1N1 outbreak and examine controversies over childhood vaccinations.

Readings:

• “How Social Networks Shaped Disease Transmission During 2009 H1N1 Pandemic,” Journalist’s Resource.
• “Public Should Receive More Complete Warnings,” CBS News Investigates, August 19, 2009.
• “Drug Makers’ Push Leads to Cancer Vaccines’ Rise,” New York Times, August 19, 2008
• “We Are Not Immune: Influenza, SARS and the Collapse of Public Health,” Harpers, July 2004.
• “Chiropractors and Vaccination: A Historical Perspective,” Pediatrics, April 1, 2000.
• “The Legitimacy of Vaccine Critics: What Is Left After the Autism Hypothesis?” Journal of Health Politics and Law, 2012.

Class 2: Covering the new epidemic — obesity

Discussion: Examine how the obesity epidemic has been framed and discuss ways to cover the story beyond the obvious.

Readings:

• “Disparities in Obesity Patterns Among Adolescents,” Journalist’s Resource.
• “Evaluating Sugary Drink Nutrition and Marketing to Youth,” Journalist’s Resource.
• Food Politics: Part 2, “Working the System”; part 3, “Exploiting Kids, Corrupting Schools.”
• “The Media and Obesity,” Obesity Review, 2007.
• “Supersized Bias II,” Media Research Center, December 14, 2004.

Helpful resources: Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters,
Association of Health Care Journalists.

Assignment due this week: An 800-word blog post that compares the health of two communities using data from U.S. census data, The Commonwealth Fund, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, University of Wisconsin and Community Health Status Indicators.

Week 4: How the United States pays for health care

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

America has a bifurcated system of health insurance based largely on employment with coverage supplied by private insurers. Medicare, a social insurance program, covers the elderly and disabled people; Medicaid, a means-tested welfare program, covers the poor for health care and the middle class for long-term care.

Class 1: The private insurance system

Discussion: This class will examine the role of employers in providing insurance and how private insurance carriers work, how they select risks, price and market their products, choose doctors for their networks, and decide which claims to pay.

Readings:

• One Nation Uninsured, chapters 2, 5, 6, 7.
• “Health Insurer Tied Bonuses to Dropping Sick Policyholders,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2007.
• “How Insurers Reject You: BlueCross BlueShield of Texas’ Blueprint for Denying Health Policies,” Slate, February 10, 2010.
• “How Private Health Coverage Works: A Primer,” Kaiser Family Foundation.
• “Health Reform and Medical Bankruptcy in Massachusetts,” Journalist’s Resource.
• “Insurers Alter Cost Formula, and Patients Pay More,” New York Times, April 24, 2012.
• “Cuomo Aims to Salvage Health Pact,” Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2012.

Class 2: The public insurance system

Discussion: This class focuses on how Medicare, Medicaid, and the CHIP program provide coverage for the elderly, the poor and children from low-income families. Students will learn the differences between social insurance and welfare programs, and understand the sales and marketing of Medicare Advantage plans and Medicare supplement insurance that add a private dimension to the Medicare program.

Readings:

• “Medicare: A Primer,” Kaiser Family Foundation, April 26, 2010.
• “Medicaid: A Primer,” Kaiser Family Foundation, June 22, 2010.
• The Politics of Medicare, chapters 1, 9, 10.
• “Covering Medicare” archive, Columbia Journalism Review.

Week 5: Covering long-term care

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

As the U.S. population ages, long-term care has become a serious topic to cover. It involves investigating nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and other care options in the community, and reporting on the quality and safety of their services. Most of these facilities operate as for-profit businesses whose financial goals sometimes conflict with the need to provide good care. Students will learn how to judge nursing home finances using such tools as Medicare cost reports, annual reports, and documents filed in lawsuits.

Class 1: Nursing homes and assisted living facilities

Discussion: This class will explore how nursing homes changed from non-profit to for-profit providers, the lobbying clout of the industry, and the role of Medicaid in paying for long-term care. Students will examine the state and regulatory systems for nursing homes, state inspection reports, and the lack of oversight for assisted-living facilities. It will also discuss how consumers and reporters can evaluate nursing homes using government data and simple techniques of observation.

Readings:

• “Nursing Homes: Business as Usual,” Consumer Reports, September 2006.
• “Nursing Home Guide,” Consumer Reports.
• “Trust and Neglect: Special Report on Nursing Homes in Michigan,” part 1 (others optional), Detroit Free Press, December 11, 2011.
• “Falsified Patient Records Are Untold Story of California Nursing Home Care,” Sacramento Bee, September 18, 2011.
• Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare database, Association of Health Care Journalists.
• “At Many Nursing Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing,” New York Times, September 23, 2007.

Helpful resource: “Covering the Health of Local Nursing Homes,” Association of Health Care Journalists.

Class 2: The forgotten services — home care, board and care homes,
food programs, and Medicaid waivers

Discussion: This class will teach students how these programs work and are regulated, how to find stories from community advocates, and how to evaluate the quality of health care they provide.

Readings:

• “Seniors for Sale: Exploiting the Aged and Frail in Washington’s Adult Family Homes,” Seattle Times, November 17, 2011.
• “Hunger in America,” The Nation, March 30, 1998.
• “Home Alone: Adult Health Center Cuts Devastate Elderly, Disabled,” New America Media, October 27, 2011.

Assignment due this week: 800 to 1,000 word story evaluating inspection reports for a chosen nursing home.

Week 6: Covering hospitals

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Hospitals account for a third of U.S. health care spending. They play competitive games to attract patients, often through promotion of expensive medical devices and services. Hospitals are big businesses and enjoy patient loyalty in ways most enterprises do not. They also can be unsafe and vary in the quality of care delivered, a reality that conflicts with hospitals’ “good guy” image.

Class 1: The hospital as a business enterprise

Discussion: Students will learn how to analyze hospital financial statements such as 10k and 990 filings, understand charity care, marketing, executive compensation, hospital regulation and state survey inspection reports. They will also examine the myth of hospital competition as a way to lower health care costs and the trend toward consolidation.

Readings:

• “Medical Debt Puts More at Risk,” The Bergen Record, January 22, 2012.
• “In Their Debt,” Baltimore Sun (parts 1, 2, 3), December 21, 2008.
• “The New Goliaths,” The National Journal, February 17, 2012.
• “Hospitals’ Geographic Expansion in Quest of Well-Insured Patients: Will the Outcome Be Better Care, More Cost or Both?” Health Affairs, April 2012.
• “Debt Collectors Pursue Patients Inside Hospitals,” New York Times, April 25, 2012.

Helpful resources: “How to Cover Hospitals” and “Tools for Covering Hospitals,” Association of Health Care Journalists.

Class 2: Hospital safety and quality

Discussion: Government data increasingly show that hospitals can be unsafe. This class will discuss sources of safety data and how to use it to frame stories. Students will also learn about the ratings schemes for hospitals, how to separate the reasonable from the questionable, and whether any of them have relevance to patients.

Readings:

• “Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas,” Las Vegas Sun (parts 1, 2, 4), June 27, 2010.
• “How Our Hospitals Unleashed a MRSA Epidemic,” Seattle Times, November 16, 2008.
• “Should Health Journos Use Hospital Safety Data?” Columbia Journalism Review, March 12, 2012.
• To Err Is Human, chapters 2, 3, 6.
• HealthGrades website.

Assignment for in-class discussion: Students should choose a hospital in their community and look at three different rating schemes to see how the selected facility stands up. Consider what a consumer would do with the ratings.

Week 7: Covering the health professions

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Covering health care professionals — doctors, nurses, dentists, therapists — has long been a staple of the health beat, but in recent years it has taken on new importance as professionals increasingly advertise their services. We will explore state and federal regulatory systems that are designed to ensure patient safety but often fail to do so. We will also evaluate safety and quality data available from government agencies and learn how to differentiate rating schemes that are self-serving and those that may be useful to journalists.

Class 1: How we regulate doctors, nurses and the rest

Discussion: In this class, students will learn how to use information and data about practitioners from such sources as state licensing boards and the National Practitioner Data Bank. They will explore the larger question: Why bad doctors and other professionals continue to practice medicine.

Readings:

• “When Caregivers Harm: America’s Unwatched Nurses,” ProPublica.
• “Missouri Secretive, Lax on Doctor Discipline,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 2010.
• “Fatal Mistakes,” AARP Bulletin, November 2004.

Class 2: The malpractice myth

Discussion: Contrary to popular belief, malpractice lawsuits are not responsible for the high cost of U.S. health care. The academic literature is full of suggestions that would address this contentious issue and result in more equitable compensation for those injured by medical practitioners. Students will discuss defensive medicine and learn about the politics, the options, and how to understand the spin from lawyers and doctors so they can report with more knowledge and nuance.

Readings:

• “Righting Wrongs,” AARP Bulletin, April 2006.
• “Excluded Voices: Health Care Costs,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 18, 2011.
• “Medical Malpractice,” The New England Journal of Medicine, January 15, 2004.
• “Surmounting Myths and Mindsets in Medical Malpractice,” Urban Institute, October 2005.
• “Malpractice Risk According to Physician Specialty,” Journalist’s Resource.

Assignment for in-class discussion: Students will examine disciplinary actions against doctors and dentists (or any other health professional the instructor chooses) in their state and be prepared to discuss their findings and suggest possible stories based on what they find.

Week 8: The pharmaceutical industry, part 1

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Drug makers and manufacturers of medical devices are some of the most profitable businesses around. They enjoy considerable public and political support and spend billions of dollars on advertising and marketing to ensure that the public and politicians think well of their efforts. While many companies’ products have improved health, firms also market drugs and high-tech equipment that boost the cost of care without providing commensurate benefits to patients.

Class 1: Drug industry basics

Discussion: Class will examine how the drug and medical device industry creates new drugs. Students will learn about research and development costs, patent protection, and the industry’s profitability.

Reading: The Truth About the Drug Companies, chapters 1 through 6, 10

Class 2: How the U.S. regulates drugs and devices — the FDA approval process

Discussion: Health reporters need to understand how the FDA regulates drugs and devices, what the rules are, what approval means and does not mean, political pressures the FDA faces. Students will consider the question: Is the public well protected? To prepare for class, students will browse the FDA website and familiarize themselves with FDA documents such as proceedings of advisory panel meetings, adverse event reports, black-box warnings, labeling rules, advertising regulations and warning letters to advertisers.

Readings:

• “Stronger Cautions Backed on Bone Drugs for Women,” New York Times, September 10, 2011.
• “The High Cost of Failing Artificial Hips,” New York Times, December 27, 2011.
• “New Models of Implants Not Better, Study Finds,” New York Times, December 23, 2011.
• “Group Faults The F.D.A. on Oversight of Devices,” New York Times, April 13, 2011.
• “Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill,” New York Times, December 17, 2006.
• “Political Lobbying Drove FDA Process,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2009.

Week 9: The pharmaceutical industry, part 2

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Class 1: How the industry markets to doctors and patients — detailing, selling sickness, disease advocacy groups

Discussion: In this class, reporters covering the pharmaceutical industry from the business, health or consumer perspective will become acquainted with the ways the industry increases the market for new drugs.

Readings:

• “Should Health Advocacy Groups Disclose Funding?” Pharmalot, January 13, 2011.
• “The Fight Against Disease Mongering,” Public Citizen Health Research Group Health Letter, May 2006.
• “Following the Script: How Drug Reps Make Friends and Influence Doctors,” PLoS Medicine, April 24, 2007.
• “The Thin Pill,” Wired magazine, October 2006.
• “Giving Legs to Restless Legs: A Case Study of How the Media Helps Make People Sick,” PLoS Medicine, April 11, 2006.
• The Truth About the Drug Companies, chapters 7, 8, 9.

Class 2: How the industry uses the media to market its products

Discussion: This class will examine direct-to-consumer advertising, the industry’s use of social media and traditional media, and how the media themselves have played a role in helping to market pharmaceuticals.

Readings:

• “ADHD’S Facebook ‘Friends’,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2009.
• “A Decade of Direct-to Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs,” The New England Journal of Medicine, August 16, 2007.
• “Bitter Pill,” Columbia Journalism Review, July 2005.
• “New Drugs: A Dose of Reality — the Press Too Often Plays Up the Positive,” Columbia Journalism Review September 1999.
• “Giving Legs to Restless Legs: A Case Study of How the Media Helps Make People Sick,” PLoS Medicine, April 11, 2006.

Assignment for in-class discussion: Choose a widely advertised drug and evaluate the effectiveness of the commercials. Look for evidence of risks and benefits, warnings and usefulness to potential users.

Week 10: Understanding medical studies

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Most health reporters will be asked to report on new medical studies, and the temptation will be to report on the usually glowing findings touted in press releases. But reporting on what the studies really find and interpreting what they mean is tricky. This class will acquaint students with some basic epidemiological concepts and help them learn the criteria for reporting useful and accurate information to the public. Students will also learn where medical news comes from, how it is disseminated, and the politics of medical journals.

Class 1: How to read and interpret medical studies

Discussion: This class focuses on the nuts and bolts of reading studies. Students will learn
concepts such as absolute and relative risk, number needed to treat and the hierarchy of evidence. They will also learn about journal embargos and how to interpret news from medical conferences. Students should familiarize themselves with blog posts on Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch.

Readings:

• “Bitter Pill,” Columbia Journalism Review, July 2005.
• “Tips for Understanding Studies,” and “Review Criteria,” Health News Review.
• “Coverage by the News Media of the Benefits and Risks of Medications,” The New England Journal of Medicine, June 1, 2000.
• “Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence,” Annals of Internal Medicine November 7, 2000.
• “Mixed Grades for Medical Coverage,” Columbia Journalism Review, April 22, 2011.
• “Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Why Journals Need to Rethink Retractions,” The Guardian, January 15, 2011.
• “Ethical and Scientific Implications of the Globalization of Clinical Research,” The New England Journal of Medicine, February 19, 2009.
• “Randomized Control Trials: Observational Studies and the Hierarchy of Research Designs.” The New England Journal of Medicine, June 22, 2000.

Helpful resources: Covering Medical Research: A Guide for Reporting on Studies, Association of Health Care Journalists; “Levels of Evidence” and “Evidence-Based Medicine Glossary,” Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine.

Assignment for in-class discussion: Find a news report of a medical study and be prepared to evaluate the story according to the criteria from Health News Review.

Class 2: Clinical trials and IRBs

Discussion: In this class the focus will be on clinical trials and how they work, the risks and benefits of joining one, what they mean for drug safety and efficacy. Class will also discuss the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that scrutinize the methodology and procedures used in every clinical trial. It will examine how well participants are protected.

Readings:

• “The Right to a Trial,” The New Yorker, December 18, 2006.
• “The Biotech Death of Jesse Gelsinger,” New York Times, November 28, 1999.
• “Ten Years Later: Jesse Gelsinger’s Death and Human Subjects Protection,” Bioethics Forum, October 22, 2009.
• “Ethical and Scientific Implication of the Globalization of Clinical Research,” The New England Journal of Medicine, February 19, 2009.

Assignment due this week: 1,000-word consumer story on whether a patient should join a clinical trial.

Week 11: The high cost of medical care

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

The U.S. spends more on health care than any country in the world. A large chunk of that outlay is spent on high-tech treatments of unproven worth that contribute to the overtreatment that Americans experience. Paradoxically, overtreatment exists alongside the lack of treatment for people who need care but cannot get it. Historically, businesses and practitioners have resisted attempts to control what they can charge, and there have been few attempts by the government to limit what health care providers and sellers charge.

Class 1: Why are costs so high? The paradox of overtreatment and undertreatment, and the myths of preventive care

Discussion: This class will explore the differences between the way the United States and other countries control medical costs. Students will examine the cost-control methods called for by the health reform law, cost differences among U.S. localities, the paradox of over- and undertreatment, and the myths of preventive care. Students will familiarize themselves with the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care and geographic variation in cost and quality of health care and the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Readings:

• “The Obama Administration’s Options for Health Care Cost Control: Hope Versus Reality,” Annals of Internal Medicine, April 7, 2009.
• “Health Care Spending: The Basics; How Much Do We Spend on Hospitals?” (part 1), Century Foundation, April 4, 2008.
• “The Cost Conundrum,” The New Yorker, June 1, 2009.
• “Bundling Payments to Curb Health Care Costs Proves Difficult to Achieve,” RAND, November 2011.
• “Benchmarking Preventive Care Utilization,” Milliman Research Reports, March 21, 2011.
• “Excluded Voices: An Interview with Rutgers Professor Louise Russell,” Columbia Journalism Review, June 16, 2009.
• “Is High Spending on Cancer Care ‘Worth It’?” Reuters, April 9, 2012.
• “An Analysis of Whether Higher Health Care Spending in the United States Versus Europe Is ‘Worth It’ in the Case of Cancer,” Health Affairs, April 2012.
• “In Long Drive to Cure Cancer, Advances Have Been Elusive,” New York Times, April 24, 2009.
• “Mammogram Study Reignites Controversy on Breast Cancer Screening,” ABC News, September 29, 2010.
• “New Mammogram Guidelines Are Causing Confusion, But Here’s Why They Make Sense,” Our Bodies, Ourselves Blog, November 18, 2009.
• “The Quality of Health Care Delivered to Adults in the United States,” The New England Journal of Medicine, June 26, 2003.

Class 2: Covering medical technology

Discussion: Health and business reporters will be asked to report on new medical technology, and as in the case when they cover new drugs, the press release too often becomes the story. But there is much more to reporting about technology that explains how it contributes to the country’s high health care tab.

Readings:

• “The Case of CT Angiography: How Americans View and Embrace New Technology,” Health Affairs, November 2008.
• “Covering Medical Technology: The Seven Deadly Sins,” Columbia Journalism Review,September/October 2001.
• “Unproven for Older Women, Digital Mammography Saps Medicare Dollars,” Center for Public Integrity, October 17, 2011.
• “Digital Mammography No Better than Film for Most Women Despite Increased Costs,” Center for Public Integrity, October 17, 2011.
• “The Quality of Health Care Delivered to Adults in the United States,” The New England Journal of Medicine, June 26, 2003.
• “The Evidence Gap” series (instructors can choose readings), New York Times.
• “Excluded Voices: An interview with Andrew Dillon,” Columbia Journalism Review, August 18, 2009.

Week 12: Ethics and conflicts of interest in health reporting

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

Health and medicine are full of conflicts of interest, which are inevitable in profit-making enterprises that characterize the U.S. health system. Health care sellers such as pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, health care professionals, and insurers often advertise in the news media, making it difficult to bite the hand that feeds.

Class 1: Conflicts in the medical business

Discussion: This class will focus on ghost writing at medical journals, financial ties between doctors and drug companies, drug company influence in hospital purchasing, and financial support of patient advocacy groups that appear to advocate for patients but instead help drug companies.

Readings:

• “Financial Transparency Skin-deep at Medical Journals,” Reuters Health, June 8, 2011,
• “Dollars for Docs,” ProPublica, September 7, 2011.
• “Respected Physicians Call for End of Conflicts of Interest with the Drug Industry” and “From Lancet: Just How Tainted Has Medicine Become?” MedicationSense.
• “Under the Microscope,” Boston Globe, January 22, 2006.
• “At Medical Journals, Writers Paid by Industry Play Big Role,” Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2005.

Class 2: The media’s own conflicts of interest

Discussion: This class will discuss how the media’s own interests team up with players in the medical enterprise to keep the public in the dark. Many news outlets, particularly television networks, depend on advertising from drug companies and hospitals that push products and services that might not be in the best interests of patients. Students will discuss such questions as: How do reporters get their work published when there’s pushback from management? How do journalists maintain their integrity when asked to shill for health-care providers or sellers? When is it acceptable to work for a health care business?

Readings:

• “Epidemic,” Columbia Journalism Review March/April 2007.
• “Another Cozy TV-Hospital Partnership,” Columbia Journalism Review, April 1, 2011.
• “Unhealthy Alliances Between Hospitals and TV Stations,” Columbia Journalism Review, August 12, 2008.
• “In South Carolina, another Hospital/Journo Alliance,” Columbia Journalism Review, January 20, 2012.
• “News Director Quits Over Hospital Deal,” Columbia Journalism Review, January 25, 2008.

Week 13: Understanding the traps in health reporting

Previous week | Next week | Back to top

The course will conclude this week with a discussion of the obstacles and pitfalls health reporters sometimes encounter. Each class should also fold in a wrap-up and evaluation of the course and allow students to present their final stories if there is time.

Class 1: Finding sources and using real people in your stories

Discussion: Students will learn the dos and don’ts for telling patient stories and learn about websites that can be helpful as entry points for good reporting. Class will focus on how to choose people to humanize stories, dealing with canned anecdotes provided by advocacy groups and others, and how to go into peoples’ homes for one-on-one interviews that can either make or break a story.

Readings:

• “Woman Featured in State Journal Article Died Before Publication,” Wisconsin State Journal, July 22, 2011.
• “Reporter Offers Advice on Avoiding Embarrassing Incident,” Association of Health Care Journalists, August 3, 2011.
• “Lessons of a $618,616 Death,” Bloomberg Businessweek, March 4, 2010.
• “What Patients Really Want From Health Care,” JAMA, December 14, 2011.

Class 2: Avoiding the trap of misleading or wrong “facts”

Discussion: Incorrect information has a way of creeping into health stories. Sometimes it results from disinformation campaigns by stakeholders or government agencies; sometimes it results when reporters don’t make the extra call or two that would produce the right fact or number. Students will discuss ways to avoid these mistakes.

Readings:

• “Nine Lives of a Disputed Fact,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 16, 2012.
• “McKinsey Backpedals on Health Care Reform Study,” Mother Jones, July 2011.
• “Meet the Bay State’s Uninsured,” Columbia Journalism Review, September 26, 2011.
• “Census Data Produces Opposing Views of the Uninsured in Massachusetts,” Boston Health News, September 11, 2009.

Final paper due today

_________

A special thanks to Trudy Lieberman, of University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Columbia Journalism Review, for help in writing this syllabus.

The post Health reporting: Semester-long course on covering the science, policy and business of health care appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.