Ben Goldacre on how blogs can be ‘more reliable’ than mainstream media
Courtesy of Conrad Quilty-Harper, of the Spalpeen blog, here’s Dr Ben Goldacre on video talking about Bad Science… in a toilet (Goldacre’s choice, apparently). With little fear of the germs, Goldacre puts the loo seat down (about halfway through) and summarizes his thoughts on sensationalised science reporting.
Perhaps most interestingly for online journalists he airs his thought on media reliability: around the seven minute mark Goldacre says:
“…blogs are potentially more reliable than mainstream media ever was – mainly because you can check for each individual blog author, how credible they are, because bloggers link to primary resources…”
His thoughts on journalists and their deliberate disguising of sources (for example, not making it clear they’re quoting a press release) are worth a listen.
The doc’s getting about in the mainstream media too: he was on BBC Radio 4 (again) yesterday, featuring on ‘Start the Week‘.
Here’s the original Spalpeen video:
Ben Goldacre of Bad Science talks about Sensationalised Science Reporting from Conrad on Vimeo.
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January 21st, 2009 at 11:02 am
[...] Ben Goldacre on how blogs can be “more reliable” than mainstream media [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 2:03 am
[...] det faktum att bloggare/medborgare på allvar faktiskt konkurrerar med etablerade medier är långt ifrån ett svenskt fenomen. Men det behöver inte ses som något dåligt eller vara hotfullt, det bör ses som en möjlighet [...]