Nlogaxical – What am I doing here?

I was one of the lucky 400 to have tickets for last night’s Goldacre – Drayson debate at the Royal Institution.  90 minutes of back and forth discussion about the state of British science journalism and how it’s both viewed by and acted upon by ‘end users’ of mass media, ie the rest of us.  While there was plenty of online conjecture via Twitter and blogs during the event (judging by the number of open laptops and lit phone displays around me), I think some of it had lost the point.  There should be no ‘winner and loser’ in the debate.   If the standard of science journalism drops to the point where none of us know which way is up or down, which items cause cancer or which are rumoured to enable eternal life – then we will all lose.

The debate dovetailed into a longer question, one which has bugged me for a long time – that being the state of all journalism today.   What defines ‘journalism’ anymore?  And if it can still be defined, against what standards can it judged? Yesterday there was an interesting moment where most of BBC News’ online headlines were effectively reports OF reports.  (confused?  try BBC ‘News’ )    For a while, the front page looked more like DigitalSpy than the front page of a world-leading news gathering organisation.   Rumour, conjecture, gossip.    So who can you believe anymore?