Media and Minorities

188
Georg Ruhrmann
Scientific Evidence and Distorted News Coverage
Journalists increasingly report on scientific studies of immigration and integration.
At the same time, however, the scientists who conduct those studies
notice that media coverage is often summary and frequently focuses on isolated
or sensational findings taken out of their context. Critical studies also
show that the media sometimes present the complex findings of social science
research in distorted or incomplete ways and, in particular, fail to consider the
addressed epistemological dimensions.35 Journalists often are not interested
in theoretical and methodological advances or are they sensitive to the fragility
of new evidence based on these findings. Instead, they select for coverage
isolated aspects or single cases that are spectacular or especially relevant to
the public’s interests. These can then easily be used in immigration-policy
controversies as alleged proof of politically motivated positions. Journalists
justify their selections in terms of their obligation to inform the public or the
legitimacy of following up on the earlier reporting of their colleagues, who report
on scientific research in a similar manner. Figure 2 illustrates how this
happens.
Scientific studies from all levels of the evidence hierarchy are subject to
common journalistic selection criteria and strategies. These include gatekeeping,
news factors, news frames, and news biases. Coverage depends, in the
first place, on the feasibility of a study’s subject matter as a story, which in
cludes the quick availability of images and text and the study’s fit into established
journalistic forms. For example, journalists seek objectivity and balance
in the form of points and counterpoints. A study’s evaluation of practical
opportunities and risks are also relevant. (See fig. 2.)36 But, journalists do not
then simply describe actual studies. Instead, they select interesting aspects
and details in accord with sound journalistic practice. (See the top of fig. 2.)
Journalistic selection criteria include a study’s innovativeness, its political and
social relevance, its problems and risks for the population that it addresses,
and the social or economic benefit of its results.
The immigration-policy debate in Germany offers several examples of
these in the forms of appeals, manifestos, and disputes among experts. These
35 See Martyn Hammerley, Media Bias in Reporting Social Research? The Case of Reviewing
Ethnic Inequalities in Education (New York: Routledge, 2006), 135–155 and Sharon
Dunwoody, “Journalistic Practice and Coverage of the Behavioral and Social Science,”
in Handbook on Communicating and Disseminating Behavioral Science, eds. Melissa
L. Welch-Ross and Lauren G. Fasig (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2007), 57–72.
36 Georg Ruhrmann and Lars Guenther, “Risk communication,” in Oxford Bibliographies
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); http://www.oxfordbibliographies.
com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841–0156.xml (accessed 21 July
2015).
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882