Watch five hours of US cable news, and on average you will see around 35 minutes on election campaigns, another 36 minutes on US foreign policy, and 26 minutes on crime — but only about one minute on science and technology, slightly more on the environment, and only a little over 3 minutes on medicine and health care.
Given how wretched the coverage that you do see is, we're probably better off having them largely ignore science.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment, Frank. Science and technology is often treated like some strange planet that reporters quickly visit before returning to the safety of politics and crime. Even the coverage of the New York blackout a few years ago seemed to focus far more on people strolling across bridges than it did on why the event happened and what could have been done to prevent it (or what can be done to prevent it in the future - - much of which hasn't been accomplished, I believe).
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