However, in the real world everybody has an agenda. Journalists want fame, money, and sex toys. Their editors, producers, bosses, even the guy who cleans the gunge from the bottom of the coffee pot wants fame, money, and sex toys. The owners of the networks want, well... fame, money, and sex toys. And maybe a Ferrari, a beach house at Malibu, and a kiss from Claudia Schiffer too. They all have their own set of opinions, their own set of biases, their own set of filters through which to view the world. The dangerous ones are the ones who don't know it, or perhaps the ones who know it subconsciously but won't admit it even to themselves. There isn't a journalist out there who is willing to actually say it like it is.
One of the closest might be Bill O'Reilly, famous for the O'Reilly Factor. The thing I admire the most about his TV show is how he insists on getting straight(ish) answers to his questions. Any sign of the interviewee trying the standard techniques of weasel words, evasions, and my favorite interview technique of giving the right answer to a completely different (but related) question, and O'Reilly is all over them like a rash.
You know what I mean about giving the right answer to a different question, right? It's a much used technique made popular by Bill Clinton, who when asked "Did you have sex with Monica Lewinsky?" answered correctly the question "Did you have vaginal sex with Monica Lewinsky?" Apparently "oral sex" is not "having sex". Maybe I'll tell my wife, "Honey, I'm going to the local bar to pick up a few blondes and not have sex with them." I notice that nobody asked Bill Clinton whether he had anal sex with Monica Lewinsky. I don't think that the American judicial system is ready for that question yet. Not that I particularly want to know the answer.
Bill O'Reilly is not afraid to voice his opinions, and that's what turns a lot of people off. I mean, who really cares what he thinks? He's a great journalist, sure, but remember the Transfer of Authority Rule from the section How a Scientist Thinks. It applies to Bill O'Reilly too. Who cares what his personal opinion about the issue-of-the-day is? Stick to grilling weasels, Bill.
Although I have to admit that O'Reilly's No Spin Zone mantra is a clever piece of spin that simultaneously mocks both the networks and his audience. Good one, Bill. Getting back to the subject of MS, my point is that you shouldn't put too much stock in what you read about the "latest MS news", regardless of the source:
Rule #1: There's no such thing as a "no spin zone".
So where should you go for your latest MS news? You could go directly to the source, scientific papers written in refereed research journals. You'll need access to a good medical library at a nearby university or medical school, or a lot of money to subscribe to journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association. Electronic access to many journals still requires a subscription fee even though the production costs are minimal, but you can often find abstracts on the web for free (for example, Thomas J. Copeland, Jr. has a list of abstracts on his website). That may not be the best way of doing it because, as you might remember reading in an earlier section on How a Scientist Thinks:
Rule #2: Scientists write for each other.
Each time you read a news article about some breakthrough news about MS, whether it is a drug test or a "65% of MS sufferers ate worms as a child" statistical correlation, you should keep in mind that we're not talking about primary sources here. We're talking about an article written by a journalist who read a press release written by a technical writer at a university or research lab who may have actually spoken to the assistant of the scientists who did the actual research. Not to mention the journalist's supervisor who changed some of the wording so that the article flowed better and the editor who cut out 1000 words so that it would fit underneath the Daily Horoscope.
Rule #3: What you read or hear in the media has been written, re-written, and edited by several people, each with different agendas.
Mostly the Science Reporter slot doesn't go to the hottest journalist in the pack. And there are few journalists who went into the field because they love science and want to give it a better image. All they are doing is word-crafting, it's not like they actually understand what they're writing or speaking about, right? Unlike Tricia McMillan in Douglas Adams' novel Mostly Harmless:
Rule #4: Journalists are typically not the guys and girls who got the A's in math and science. They probably didn't get B's either.
Journalists don't actually intend to distort science reporting. They usually read the press release, cut-and-paste a few sentences from it, massage the wording a little, maybe phone a few key people and get a couple of quotes, add a catchy heading and send it to the editor.
I've been interviewed by journalists - newspaper, TV, and radio - a couple of dozen times, so I know the process. The first time was the worst. A journalist for an engineering magazine attended one of the talks I gave at a scientific conference and wrote an article about it without even telling me, let alone interviewing me. They were gracious enough to send me a copy afterwards. The article contained some pretty outrageous quotes, things I would never actually say. The journalist had taken things I said in my public talk and quoted them out of context, replacing words with others that have the same dictionary meanings but different connotations. The resulting quotes were complete fabrications.
I've seen the same thing - to a less harmful degree - every time I've given a quote to a journalist. What appears in print is not what I actually said. They either can't write down a quote correctly or they must edit it for style or something. The problem is, technical terms have specific, limited meanings, and replacing them with a dictionary-equivalent word can be actually harmful. So, when you read a newspaper article:
Rule #5: The stuff in quotation marks is probably wrong too.
I guess the bottom line is to think about what you are reading and hearing. Not about the content, but at a higher level. Who wrote it? Is it an article written by a journalist? Is it somebody you trust from experience? Is it a press release from a drug company? Is it a press release from a university or nonprofit organizations? What are the agendas of the writer and the organization he or she represents? After all:
Rule #6: Mass media is primarily an advertising delivery system. Any news or entertainment content is just there to bring in the shills.