Scare stories. Or some arguments for providing journalism with a licence to think

Journalists are often blamed for producing scare stories. It seems to have been forgotten that many, perhaps most, modern scare stories are based on scientific risk calculations, and that journalists are not trained in scaring the wits out of people in that particular way. A more precise accusation might be that journalists are eager, unthinking and unquestioning conveyors of results from scientific risk calculations. Calculation of risk has become an important research product; a product fitting nicely into conventional journalistic storytelling, but the concept of risk tends to dilute value disagreement and conflict of interests into seemingly purely factual issues, leaving little room for political debate. Moreover, the cargo attitude of journalism is in conflict with the journalistic ideal of critical investigation and analysis on behalf of the public to stimulate common deliberation in the public sphere. Apparently, the production of scientific knowledge is excluded from the public sphere. Regarding discussions on science and technology, journalists will have to enquire into aspects of facts, values and social interests to live up to the ideal of investigation on behalf of the public. Several obstacles along this path can be identified, one of them being the commercialization of journalism in the media-industry and of scientific research in the knowledge-industry. Universities, in the search for a meaning of life, might consider providing a home for independent, reflexive journalism on science in a social context.