Although vaccine-sceptics or climate-sceptics predate the pandemic, the movements that promote mistrust of experts are becoming more prominent. Improve your coverage to prevent misrepresenting people and stories
People who do not trust credible scientific findings are nothing new. But as society focuses on fighting the pandemic or climate change, it is important that journalists report correctly on these movements and the driving forces behind them.
It is a sensitive topic to navigate. Thankfully, Devin Windelspecht rounded up helpful tips for reporting on science-scepticism in this article for IJNet.
Apart from the need to always provide context about the ideas and groups you are reporting on, journalists must remember to keep the stories in proportion to what is really happening.
"Throughout the pandemic, anti-vaccine demonstrations regularly appeared on the front pages of newspapers. Continuously spotlighting these events can create the perception that science scepticism is a larger phenomenon than it actually is. When reporting on these movements, it’s important to contextualise them within the larger framework of high levels of trust in science," the article reads.
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