Paul Trotman on science spin
"It's not just the public who isn't very interested in science; it's also the media, especially television."
- Paul Trotman, writing in The Scientist
Trotman, a former scientist turned writer and television producer, was responding to an ongoing debate in The Scientist about the whether it's ethical for scientists to use spin when engaging with the non-scientist public about their research. In his experience, science without some dramatic element (whether real or fabricated) is unlikely to get picked up by TV commissioners, even on dedicated science channels such as Discovery. Television, he says, is about entertainment, and "information is not entertainment". What's more, finding the drama hidden in a science story is hard if you don't know anything about it, as is unfortunately the case with most media practitioners.
You can read all of Trotman's comment along with others here.