Media Incompetency

[Mortblanc]

I was just watching an interview with the scientist John Hawks. He was the man responsible for the discovery of the Rising Star cave system containing the multiple burials of Homo Naledi, 500,000 years old.

He is a paleo-geneticist now and was talking about all the things being found regarding population spread and mental and physical evolution. Some of it was Earth shaking and relatively unknown. Especially the discovery that massive blocks of population covering huge sections of the Earth have genetically changed in as little as 5,000 years. This changes the traditional view of evolution as occurring over millions of years and shows that many evolution changing patterns occurred in just a few generations.

The interviewer asked why this information was not being spread?

Dr. Hawks replied that it is due to the complete absence of scientific journalism today. That is for two reasons; first that the networks do not consider it controversial and exciting enough to include in a news clip in their very jammed up nightly broadcast.

And second, that the average journalist can not understand the concept of evolution well enough, or have the attention span long enough, to stand and talk for more than 5 minutes and grasp a concept. Who, What, Why and Where and this is boring and I'm outta' here!

He said that it was not until the BBC, NOVA or PBS sends a specialized documentary team, headed by research specialists, to do a full cover of a story that the information can truly be communicated, and those documentaries are few these days. The ones that exist are now 5-6 years old and outdated in a field of study that changes with each new DNA sequence.

Is the mass media actually selectively choosing reporters for their stupidity and lack of intellect?

[bigpaul]

media is only interested in 24 hour news, next day they have a new headline completely different to the days before, something that is hot news today is old news tomorrow.

[MaryN]

I think a lot of people are only interested in current news - i.e. which celeb is dating which celeb and suchlike, and probably do not have the intellect to deal with anything else. Personally, I tend to be glued to anything historical on TV, but sadly such programmes are far and few between these days.

[Straight Shooter]

The MM are only interested in what they can sell ! To a wider audience as possible ....it’s a numbers game ! Editors or programmers control the content ....mostly influenced by the owners of the paper or channel .....but I am interested in these types of documentaries and printed documents ....along with millions of others I’m sure ! There again it must have the platform to promote the information and further interest .

In general terms most people seem to have higher priorities ...like bongo bongo , higher prices of every thing , paying rent or mortgage , and holding on to their job .....is a bit of a distraction ! In any event stuff like this would not be of any interest at all ......even in good times .

[bigpaul]

I have no time for so called celebrities or those types of tv programming, I watch some of the news channels and flip from one channel to another to find the news I want.
for non news programs I generally am more interested in history and wildlife documentaries.