montanajournalism Feature, J-School, Uncategorized

Good Stories, True Stories

I remember measles.  I also remember whooping cough and the final years of the polio epidemic.  That was all part of the bad old days of our boomer childhoods.  Vaccines were part of the medical miracle that took a lot of the anxiety out of being a parent.  Fast forward half a century, and we have a population that is so accustomed to having children grow up without major illnesses that parents avoid those miracle drugs.  Maybe this is a good time to ask: what role did the media play?

If you have spent time with people suffering from autism, you know this condition beggars description.   And it is no surprise that parents’ desperation led to a frantic search for causes and cures.  It was a compelling story, for those of us who covered science in the 1990’s.  But take a look back at that coverage, and you’ll find that vaccine skeptics got a free pass in many stories.

Jon Stewart is not the only “reporter” to turn his stage http://tinyurl.com/o89he77 over to a vaccination crank.  He’s not the only one to let anti-vaccinators and misinformed parents talk about a “scientifically proven” link between vaccines and autism.  In coverage of politics or social trends, it’s fine to use the “some folks say” approach to journalism.  But when it comes to medical reporting and science in general, we need a higher bar.

This is a tough nut to crack because science is so durned slow.  And often the skeptics do turn out to be right.  Remember Galileo?  But they have to wait their turn.  Proving that vaccines did not cause autism took time.  That’s because the scientific method relies on rigor and peer review.   That schedule seldom fits with daily deadline pressures.  But the growth of the anti-vaccine movement shows that journalists need to be just as cautious as our friends in the sciences.  We should not cite baseless suspicions and conspiracy theories without giving the strongest warning signs possible.

Science and journalism have very different methods, but we have the same goal: the truth.  When it comes to science reporting, maybe journalists should let the truth get in the way of a good story

montanajournalism Dean Abramson, J-School, Student

Inside/Outside

As a reporter, I covered higher education for years.  I always felt like I was peering through smoky glass at a strange world.  That world seemed hidebound by rules from another era, encased in proud traditions that made little sense.  Now that I’m inside the ivory tower, the tables are turned, somewhat.

As a reporter, one of my pet peeves was the low success rate at many colleges and universities.  At many schools, only 10 percent of students can be expected to graduate.  I found this fact a shocking waste of talent and money for students, for hard-pressed families, and for the governments that fronted the money for these half-finished degrees.  I pushed administrators hard to explain why they could not improve those numbers.  Many shrugged their shoulders and said, they could only do so much, that student’s lives and lack of preparation simply get in the way of their studies.

Now, I’m a college administrator.   Our university is facing a decline in enrollment, thanks in large part to demographics we cannot control.  At the same time, the state is pressuring us to improve outcomes, just the sort of thing this reporter wanted to see.  But to this college administrator, that laudable goal seems a lot further away.  We know the easiest way to ensure that more students stay in school and graduate is to raise our standards, and recruit students who are better prepared.  Doing that, however, might cut our enrollment, because many students would not have the grades qualify.   So we’d get more money for retention numbers, but then lose it on enrollment.  It turns out, there are only so many ways to squeeze the balloon before it pops.

This is an old story—reporter gets a real job, and learns life ain’t as simple as he thought.  But that doesn’t meant those questions I used to ask were unfair or off base.  Now, it’s my job to help fix the problem, no matter how hard it is.  And I hope some reporter is out there staring at the numbers and putting pressure on people in higher ed—including me—to do a better job.

Dean Larry Abramson

montanajournalism guests, J-School, Student

Reflections on DiverseU

I am a white, middle class woman from Salt Lake City, Utah, so I got a few doubtful looks when I told people I was coordinating a diversity event. After months of being immersed in diversity related issues, though, I’ve come to realize that diversity is more than a buzzword. Yes, I am a white middle class woman. However, not being Mormon in a state where Mormonism is the defining trait, I learned what being a minority feels like. I had friends whose parents didn’t like me because I wasn’t Mormon when I was only 8 years old. So my point to people who’ve asked me about why I coordinated DiverseU is that no matter who you are, you can be in the majority in one situation, and a minority in another. My overall goal for DiverseU was to help people understand their roles as both majorities and minorities.

It’s hard to tell if DiverseU accomplished this goal, though. We certainly had large crowds at some of our presentations, but this was often because teachers required their classes to go. Did students attend the presentations and then leave as quickly as possible, without actually hearing what the presenters said? Or, were they there originally for the grade, but left with a new perspective on diversity? Day of Dialogue, now DiverseU, is gearing up for its tenth year, so I know that it’s had enough of an impact to stick around. These conversations are important to have, but they are not as important as the action they should prompt.

Though I spoke of being both a majority and minority, I haven’t received racist comments like Native Americans have on our own campus. I certainly haven’t been bullied for being straight. I haven’t had to deal with accessibility issues in the snow. And I haven’t had to deal with PTSD while I take classes, like our veterans do.

In my opinion, the University of Montana has two issues: one, we don’t have a lot of diversity.    According to Forbes, 85% of the campus is white.  With a lack of diversity comes a lack of different perspectives, which worsens everyone’s learning experience. That said, our other issue is we don’t have the proper resources for those who do make our campus more diverse. The University of Montana has veterans, Native Americans, LGBTQI, and disabled students who contribute to our campus. I think that if we want to make the campus more diverse, we need to focus on improving the condition for those diverse groups who are already on campus.

Each of these groups need individual initiatives to improve their conditions and frankly, I’m not in the position to suggest what those initiatives should be. What campus needs to do is listen to these groups and their requests, and then do something about it. I may be biased, but I think DiverseU has the potential to be a venue for this; DiverseU is already a place for anyone to present his or her perspective on his or her own diversity related issue. The problem is that the administration, which has the power to make campus more inviting to all sorts of diverse groups, doesn’t attend these sessions. If we can start getting administration to listen to these perspectives, it would be better prepared to make changes on campus that would lead us to a truly diverse, welcoming community.

– Kathleen Stone, J-School student and one of the organizers of DiverseU