MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

A journalist’s first obligation is to report the truth. One problem with this argument is that often things get lost in translation when journalists try to report on subjects they don’t fully understand, such as scientific research. We approach this research as students of biology who are interested in common scientific misconceptions in the news media. This project analyzes how much the media omit when trying to translate such complicated subjects. We look at headlines for articles as well as the full texts. We examine the differences and misconceptions that occur through the oversimplification of a research article into an everyday article that flows through the daily news stream. We conclude by looking at how the idea is framed by different information sources, such as science journalism, political journalism, or religious journalism. We also examine the idea of sensationalism and how it plays in various articles. This project examines these questions through the lens of one specific area of research. This area of research is a new genetics technique that transfers genetic DNA from an egg without healthy mitochondria to a new donor egg that has healthy mitochondria. The news media famously, and somewhat misleadingly, referred to this process as creating “three-parent babies.” We will give some background on what mitochondria are and what they accomplish within the cell. There are a lot of different ways to communicate the research that is done in all the science fields. There are peer-reviewed research papers, newspaper articles that cater specifically to the science community, and then regular, everyday news articles that everybody has access to. We will analyze the various types of reporting on this topic and how it gave the public a false impression of the science.