By David Shiffman and Brett Favaro.
Many environmental scientists understand that there is value in communicating about their work through the media, as publicity can help raise public awareness of a conservation threat and help build support for a policy solution. Most training material focuses on how to craft and deliver effective messages. However, this is only part of the skillset required to be effective as a media-savvy science communicator. Despite recognizing how positive media coverage can help the environmental causes they care about, many scientists are leery of speaking with journalists about their areas of expertise, owing to concerns about possible bad experiences. Here, we argue that scientists have many tools available that can affect the likelihood of whether a given interaction goes well, or goes poorly. We articulate some basic differences between professional norms in journalism versus those of science, and provide specific advice and strategies that can maximize the likelihood of a positive outcome, and reduce potential for harm. Specific examples of how we’ve used these strategies in interviews about climate change and endangered species conservation are provided throughout. By more thoroughly understanding all sides of a scientist-journalist relationship and the associated science-media cycle, scientists will be in a better position to increase the chance that their work will have the conservation impact they intend.
This is part 2 of a series of blog posts on advice for conservation scientists to communicate with journalists about their areas of expertise. Part 1 focuses on key background about the science-media ecosystem and the roles and responsibilities of journalists. This part will focus on mastering interviews themselves, and subsequent parts a scientist’s role in writing a press release about their work, and tips for navigating the current science crisis in the United States. While our examples reference our careers as conservation scientists, the principles and tips discussed throughout are broadly applicable to scientists in many related disciplines.
Part 2: Mastering the Mechanics of the Interview Itself
Master the interview: What to say, how to say it, and what not to say.
There are three key norms that a media-savvy scientist must understand.
Norm 1: Pacing: When do interviews happen?
Most interviews about a scientific paper occur right when that paper is published, or even before it is published (often a paper is presented to a journalist in advance of publication to give them time to research and write a story, in exchange they agree not to publish that story before an agreed upon embargo lift time). It is much more common for science news stories to say “according to a new study published this week” than to say “according to a study published six months ago.”
This means that the author team of a given paper must identify clearly and explicitly who the point of contact will be about a given paper (usually but not necessarily that paper’s “corresponding author”) and that person should be standing by to answer questions about it from journalists on the day it is published, including formally rearranging their schedule to accommodate (Table 1A). Media requests for expert commentary on breaking news events are harder to predict and may require some scheduling flexibility on the part of the scientist.
With respect to commentary on breaking news events, the journalist may have to file a story later that day, and may also be writing multiple other stories in the meantime. Author DSS once observed a senior scientist complain that a journalist wrote a story about his work without interviewing him, noting that the scientist was contacted, but said that he wasn’t available for an interview until after the semester ended in a few weeks. In virtually all cases, this scientist would simply not be interviewed as a result. Scientists who wish to contribute to the discourse through media interviews must understand that it is the journalist’s deadlines, not the scientist’s schedule, that will dictate the pace, a potential source of conflict noted by Reed (2001).
In some cases, an interview will be scheduled in advance, either through direct communication between the scientist and the journalist or through an intermediary like a university press officer. However, sometimes a journalist will simply call a scientist and ask for an interview ASAP. If a scientist receives a “cold call” interview request from a journalist, it is acceptable and appropriate to ask if the scientist can call the journalist back in an hour or two (During that time when , the scientist can compose their thoughts, and, if necessary, research the journalist and their publication to see if there are any red flags to be aware of.) Further, we strongly recommended scientists based at universities to develop a strong working relationship with their university press officer, and to keep them regularly apprised of developments (including upcoming papers that are weeks or months away from publication) within their research group.
An additional technical point is that journalists will sometimes ask for a visual, such as a photo of the author, during an interview. Having a professional headshot, and/or “B-Roll” of the scientist and their team in the lab or field or common images associated with their work, readily available is a good practice, otherwise the journalist may resort to using other publicly available photos that may not match the tone or tenor of the story.
Typically, an interview will take place over the phone, in person, or increasingly over teleconference software. In these cases, punctuality is essential. When you are just being asked to provide a quick comment and aren’t the main subject of the story, it is common to be asked to simply send that comment over e-mail. Here, responding promptly is similarly important.
Norm 2: Quoting and attribution: Who should be quoted, and how will they be attributed?
It is unusual for more than two authors from a paper to be quoted in a short news article about that paper. If you’re the twenty-third author on a seventy-author paper, you probably will not be mentioned in a 500-word news story about one key conclusion from that paper. The lead author and/or senior author are commonly the ones interviewed, but there are many situations where a different author may be interviewed instead (Dijkstra et al. 2015.) Establishing a point of contact from your scientific team to interact with the media should be done collaboratively, in advance, and in a way that is mindful of the power dynamics and benefits that can flow from selecting who will be the media face of the paper. We encourage senior supervisors with media experience to pass that experience on to their junior colleagues, and give them a chance to be the spokespeople for their own work. The point of contact should be identified in the press release for the paper, and may or may not be the paper’s “corresponding author,” as that role usually refers to correspondence from other scientists.
The point we are making is twofold. First, that it is critical for scientific teams to establish a point of contact for media interviews. Secondly, scientists need to understand that in many cases, they are not being snubbed by not being mentioned, and rather what they are seeing is a different norm across disciplines.
There are many examples when the lead or senior author may not be the only points of contact with a journalist. Perhaps the lead author and senior author work for an institution without an in-house public information officer or media specialist, and the paper’s press release was made by the second author’s institution. In this case, a good public information officer would also include a quote by the first author as well as their institution’s author, but for a variety of perfectly reasonable reasons the journalist may quote the second author and not the first. Alternatively, perhaps the journalist has a pre-existing professional relationship with the twenty-third author, sees their name on a paper, and reaches out to them first. In this case, that author should be sure to bring the journalist’s attention to the first and/or senior author, but the journalist may not reach out to them or may not include quotes from them for a variety of perfectly reasonable reasons. Also, perhaps the journalist wants a local angle on their story and the twenty-third author is from a local institution while the first and/or senior author work at an institution thousands of miles away. In this case, the story would likely be framed as “local scientist works on interesting international research project,” rather than “here’s an interesting conclusion from a new research project.”
We have observed several other common sources of conflict here with respect to who is quoted and what affiliations are attributed to them in the resulting media work. . First, a co-author may be upset that another co-author did not appear to mention them or their institution in a given interview. For all the reasons above, such a mention may not always be possible, though a clear communications plan for the paper, shared with all authors in advance of publication, may result in less conflict here. Additionally, the scientist may have dutifully named off their list of colleagues and collaborators, only to have that cut from the interview, owing to the norms present in media. Second, co-authors may disagree with the way that a colleague presents the main results of the paper. Here, it is incumbent upon scientists who are presenting the findings from a paper to be taking all reasonable steps to communicate those findings accurately. A prudent risk-mitigation strategy is for all co-authors to co-develop a shared understanding of key messages from the paper that will form the basis for a media plan. Further, it should be understood by the colleagues who did not participate in interviews that they should extend some grace to their colleague who did – even with the best preparation, accidents will still happen.
It is important to know that if you are interviewed about your work, you will be given one (in very rare cases two) affiliations. If you have joint appointments at seven institutions which all want you to get their name in the press when you’re interviewed about your research, six of those institutions are likely going to be disappointed. Any possible conflict here can be resolved by proactively discussing this with each institution’s press office, noting that Institution 7 is certainly free to share “this newspaper article quotes our staff scientist” even if institution 7 isn’t named in the article explicitly. Similarly, while press officers often include this information in press releases, journalists and their readers almost never care which foundation funded the research (barring some sort of clear conflict of interest resulting from the funding), and almost never care what brand of scientific equipment was used.
As with declining peer reviews, it is customary, appropriate, and helpful to suggest alternative experts who can help the journalist when you cannot. Whenever possible, we recommend suggesting alternative experts from historically underrepresented minority groups who may be less likely to be contacted directly by journalists.
Norm 3: Who else will be quoted?
Scientists should be aware that for coverage of a new scientific paper, it is a professional journalistic norm to speak to an independent expert who knows about your field but wasn’t involved in the study.
The journalist may even quote the scientist’s archnemesis as an independent expert, and may find that the independent expert is skeptical or critical of the study. This is normal and appropriate (Bhattacharya 2012) and is not an example of a journalist “screwing over” a scientist.
If you are asked to provide expert commentary, either as an independent expert in a story about a new paper you weren’t involved with (Albæk, E 2011,) or as topical expert on a breaking news story, make sure that it is indeed within your area of expertise. With respect to confirming that a news story you’re asked to provide commentary on is indeed within your area of expertise, we recognize that there are a variety of opinions on how to best handle the thorny issues surrounding “staying in your lane” vs. “gatekeeping,” but suggest having a clearly thought-out strategy for how to handle this can resolve many potential areas of conflict.
Bridging the expertise gap: What will the journalist ask you about, and what should you say (and not say?)
Journalists are experts at telling stories but have vastly less technical subject matter expertise (Peters 2013). Scientists wishing to engage with media need to do so under the understanding that it is on them to make their work accessible and understandable, and to make it possible for the journalist to tell a good story.
Effectively communicating your key conclusions to a journalist during an interview always requires planning and preparation. If the interview is about a paper, the press release should already contain some of these key points explained in plain non-technical language, and can be used as a reference. It is useful to have a sheet of bullet-points style notes handy when speaking to a journalist, especially if there are specific numbers you’ll need to be able to provide, or if you want to make sure not to forget something critical. There is value in having a sense in advance of the interview of what you’d like the eventual article to say (to make sure to stress those points), and what you’d like the eventual article not to say (so you can have a plan for how to address these points when they arise). Preparing materials as above takes time. But just as we advised that time must be set aside to execute the interview, so too must time be set aside to prepare for it.
Both preparing for and taking part in an interview can be time-intensive. Even very experienced science communicators do extensive preparation and message distillation before setting foot in a studio. We strongly recommend conducting rehearsals that match the expected interview format as much as possible. For example, if you will be on camera, have a trusted colleague film you and review the footage. If you will be on radio, practice your interview with someone holding a real physical microphone to your face. Practice especially with peers who are unfamiliar with your work – and ideally, who are not scientists themselves.
A typical interview about a scientist’s new paper is fairly extensive. We have observed many scientists complain “they interviewed me for 45 minutes but only included one sentence of quotes by me,” and we wish to stress that this is normal and appropriate. Even if the scientist’s other words weren’t used directly and attributed to that scientist, they played an important role in educating the journalist about the paper and shaping the story. An interview about a breaking news event relevant to a scientist’s area of expertise is likely to be shorter, since the scientist’s perspective and commentary is often (but not always) a small part of the overall story.
During an extensive interview, the journalist will ask some very specific questions, as well as some very basic and general questions. The scientist should not assume that a basic question is being asked because the journalist is unintelligent, something we have observed far too many scientists do–instead, be aware that they’re asking that question because a colorful quote from an expert explaining a concept is more interesting than merely quoting a dictionary definition (Bhattacharya 2012.)
As an example of a question from a journalist that can appear to a scientist to have misunderstood the point of the research, imagine a study where a fishery stock assessment was conducted, which found a given fishery was likely to collapse if overfishing was allowed to continue. The journalist may ask the scientist “so what are your thoughts on trawl nets [a type of industrial-scale fishing gear commonly associated with destructive overfishing in the eyes of the non-expert public]?” The study in this example may have been a narrow statistical exercise, and the scientist may be puzzled as to why they would be asked about an unrelated fishing gear. Yet, to a member of the public, this would be a reasonable and valuable question. Academically, the study may have had nothing directly to do with trawl nets, but in the eyes of the public, the two concepts are absolutely connected.
Similarly, a scientist being interviewed about their new paper should never reply to an interview question with “you should read the paper, the answer is clearly stated in there.” For one thing, the paper is likely too technical to be clearly understood by people who aren’t in that scientist’s immediate technical subdiscipline, but perhaps more importantly, the journalist wants to be able to quote you explaining the concept in your own words.
For example, during an interview with former Governor Jesse Ventura on his podcast, author BF was asked very general questions like “why is climate change different from other types of disasters,” which required him to think quickly to refocus his expertise into answers that were useful to the audience, accurate, and cohesive, without appearing like he was dodging tough questions.
You do not have to answer every question asked of you. You can either just say “I would prefer to not discuss this,” or you can attempt to connect the question asked of you to something that you can answer (a technique sometimes referred to as bridging). Bridging as a technique is useful in addressing another common challenge that scientists can face during interviews. Often journalists ask questions that appear to misunderstand the fundamental premise of the issue, or that are asked in ways that would be considered overly vague in academia. The correct response here is not to become angry with the journalist or rant about “the media.” Rather, it is to build a bridge to an answer that respects the question, while also communicating the findings of the study. Much as it is not a journalist’s job to make a scientist look brilliant, it is not a scientist’s job to do whatever a journalist says, and it is ok to protect yourself and your professional reputation if you come across avoidable minefields during the interview.
For example, during his campaign to change fishing regulations to protect endangered species of sharks in Florida (Shiffman 2020,) author DS compiled a list of the other sides’ talking points (e.g., some fishing interest groups were incorrectly interpreting science related to the survival of released sharks after physiologically stressful angling) and prepared responses to why they were factually incorrect or irrelevant, which was used to bridge in several media interviews. While noting that this paper is too brief to replace thorough and detailed media training, we wish to generally note that your answers to interview questions should be non-technical and approachable, and, to the extent possible, should be interesting to the news articles’ readers, not just to other scientists.
The key is to simplify complex science so it’s understandable, but not simplify it to the extent that it is incorrect. Clever analogies explaining a complex scientific concept are extremely useful here, though be sure to check that your analogies make sense to your target audience (culturally or generationally). Humorous examples, analogies or quotes can be helpful when explaining a scientific concept, though we caution you that while most people struggle to accurately assess their own humorousness, we respectfully note that you will never lose your job due to an off-color joke you did not make. Additionally, you cannot be quoted out of context saying certain words if you do not say those words in the first place!
More about norms
Many concerns we’ve heard anecdotally from scientific colleagues relate to the headline of the article about their work, not the story itself. The headline is indeed important, especially in the age of social media and sound bites where many people will see the headline and relatively few will read further to get a complete and nuanced view of the story. However, scientists need to be aware that the journalist who interviewed you very likely did not write that headline, and may not have even been consulted about the headline.
Editors often write the headlines, often without reading the entire story or learning key nuance associated with it. In our experience, journalists are sometimes as frustrated with a misleading or otherwise problematic headline as the scientists they interviewed, and if an interviewed scientist is mad at the journalist about a headline they didn’t write, this misplaced anger can sour relationships.
In cases where the headline is factually inaccurate or deeply problematic, it may be possible to work with the journalist who interviewed you or their editor to alter a headline. However, “the article is basically correct, but it doesn’t focus on my favorite part of the story” is not a crisis, and neither is “the way this is phrased isn’t technically inaccurate but kind of makes me look silly,” noted by Bhattacharya (2012) as one of the top things scientists misunderstand about science journalism. It is unusual (though not unheard of) for a media outlet to change a headline, and there is a degree of professional embarrassment associated with a journalist asking their editor to change a headline, so scientists should choose their battles here rather than alienate a journalist who otherwise did a mostly good job covering their work. For example, in nearly 300 interviews about his work or area of expertise, author DSS has requested just one headline change, and in that case learned that the journalist noted the same issue and had already proactively talked to their editor about it.
When reading the eventual article, scientists should be aware of differences in structure between scientific writing and journalistic writing to avoid confusion or frustration. The structure of a journalistic article is different from scientific writing. Scientific papers start broadly, with introductions narrowing from key background issues associated with the field and ending with specific knowledge gaps and research questions associated with this specific study. In contrast, journalists know that their readers often only read the headline or the first paragraph or two, and structure their article so that key points are presented first, and readers can find more detail and nuance if they want to read on, or can get the gist of it by just reading the start of an article (Pottker 2003).
Other complaints we’ve heard from scientists about media coverage of their work concern things that they believed were said “off the record” and were surprised to find in the resulting article. “Off the record” does not mean what most non-journalists think it means. “Off the record” is an advanced-level concept beyond the scope of this paper, but we urge readers to understand that in virtually all cases relevant to a typical scientist, if you say something to a journalist, it may end up in their story. An easier alternative that’s commonly used is “on background/not for attribution,” which, crucially and as with “off the record,” the journalist must affirmatively agree to before it means anything. It is best for most scientists to simply assume that anything they say or do (including while just chatting with the journalist before or after the formal interview) is reportable, and to conduct themselves accordingly.
Finally, please be aware that you will not be able to see a draft of the article and provide feedback on it before it is published. It would in fact be extremely inappropriate and unprofessional for a journalist to allow their interview subject to do see, edit, or approve a draft article before it is published; just imagine if the subject of a political scandal got to edit a story about their wrongdoing! It is sometimes possible, however, to ask the journalist to read back any quotes of yours to make sure that they heard you correctly, or even to run any paraphrases of your words by you. This is not always allowed, but it is reasonable to ask. An appropriate risk-mitigation strategy is to record your own side of the conversation with the journalist, so that in the event of a dispute over the specifics of a quote, you can produce the recording, though be mindful not to break any of local laws related to two-party consent for recording.
While it is inappropriate to criticize a journalist for quoting your academic rival’s valid concerns about your work, sometimes an inappropriate person without relevant expertise (or with undeclared conflicts of interest) may inappropriately criticize a study and that is potentially worthy of pushback. But the simple act of a journalist quoting a conflicting source is not, in and of itself, a valid reason for scientists to feel burned by the process of working with media.
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