TV news: Overhyped cancer cure and misreported climate science

Columbia Journalism Review : The article “Shoddy TV science coverage” criticizes CNN’s Sanjay Gupta and PBS’s NewsHour. Gupta, reporting on a press release from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is said to have conveyed “a foggy sense of something new” for cancer patients, though the actual news was only “that boosting public health programs, addressing health behaviors, dealing with social and environmental factors” and improving the health care system “could help dramatically delay the age at which cancer is likely to strike.” A 10-minute NewsHour feature engaged UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller’s “self-styled âconversion’ from climate skeptic to adherent of the longstanding scientific consensus.” The report is charged with false balance for giving air time to the skeptic Anthony Watts, with failure to challenge Watts’s scientifically discredited claims that urban heat island effects skew understanding, and with multiple references to “those who accept climate science as âbelievers,’ implying that their acceptance is based on faith rather than fact.” PBS ombudsman Michael Getler is said to have offered only a “tepid condemnation” of the lapses.