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[temporaryname]

Is this a joke ?  I talk to the media as long as they will listen, and as often as they will listen.  Publicity for my research is great.

Same here--and I don't worry about them getting it wrong. I mean, even if what they publish gets 90% of what I'm doing wrong, at least there's 10% that I can build off of when I talk to people.

Also, getting across to people the fact that I might only teach x number of courses a semester, but I'm also working on other cool stuff that's important to people--that's worth any amount of misrepresentation there is, I think.

Of course, my research has only been seriously misrepresented in the media once (out of several times it's appeared in the news--one of the main things I work on has an annual hook in one part of the country). I don't know if I'd feel the same if I worked in something like evolutionary biology, where I expect you're likely to cringe every time you see an article on the topic on the evening news.

[socsci]

I'll talk to the media any time a reporter calls or emails. It's rare that I get something through the uni's PR office. I use PR to help place op-eds, and went through them when I won an award and uni wanted to publicize it.

I like op-eds because there is not a reporter there to limit you. That said, I've only had my work misrepresented once, and was able to get an online correction.

[terpsichore]

Academics should be more prominent in the media. How about American Academic? Simon Cowell, Drew Gilpin Faust and Stanley Fish judge everyone's presentations and decide who gets an NEH grant.

Which one is Paula Abdul?

[tallenc]

Well, I'm a literature professor, so the media don't have much interest in me, I'm afraid.  I was a journalist before I became a literature professor, though, so I've seen this issue from both sides, and I suspect that when things don't go well between between academics and journalists, the problem is sometimes arrogant condescension on the part of the academics, who tend to treat journalists as if they were idiots.  No doubt some of them are, but many are intelligent, responsible people who truly want to educate the public about important issues.  Just because a journalist often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her general audience (just as a professor often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her students in an introductory course), that doesn't necessarily mean that the journalist himself/herself doesn't understand the academician's work.

That said, I would probably decline if a journalist wanted to interview me, not because I have a problem with the media so much as because agreeing to an interview would mean that I would have to deal with my college's PR people, something I do have a problem with.  Whereas both the academic and the journalist are seeking to communicate what's "true" (whether they understand truth in the same way or not), the PR officer's job is to communicate what makes the college look good, even if it's false or misleading, which is, in my opinion, both unethical and really, really annoying.

[temporaryname]

Well, I'm a literature professor, so the media don't have much interest in me, I'm afraid.  I was a journalist before I became a literature professor, though, so I've seen this issue from both sides, and I suspect that when things don't go well between between academics and journalists, the problem is sometimes arrogant condescension on the part of the academics, who tend to treat journalists as if they were idiots.  No doubt some of them are, but many are intelligent, responsible people who truly want to educate the public about important issues.  Just because a journalist often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her general audience (just as a professor often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her students in an introductory course), that doesn't necessarily mean that the journalist himself/herself doesn't understand the academician's work.

That said, I would probably decline if a journalist wanted to interview me, not because I have a problem with the media so much as because agreeing to an interview would mean that I would have to deal with my college's PR people, something I do have a problem with.  Whereas both the academic and the journalist are seeking to communicate what's "true" (whether they understand truth in the same way or not), the PR officer's job is to communicate what makes the college look good, even if it's false or misleading, which is, in my opinion, both unethical and really, really annoying.

Actually, all the interviews I've ever done (usually radio, but sometimes print) have been from a request out of the blue from a journalist, or because one of my colleagues referred a journalist to me. The only time my college's PR office asked me to talk to a journalist about a topic, I had to point out that I'd just talked to a reporter from that same newspaper two days ago about the topic.

Your mention of simplifying things for introductory classes is a good one, I think--and in most cases, that's the approach I've taken, where I assume my audience is similar to the students I get in those classes. I don't speak condescendingly to them, but I also don't go into all the little complexities of my field right from the start. It's always seemed to work for me.

[aandsdean]

Academics should be more prominent in the media. How about American Academic? Simon Cowell, Drew Gilpin Faust and Stanley Fish judge everyone's presentations and decide who gets an NEH grant.

Which one is Paula Abdul?

Oh, Stan, for sure.  Straight up.

[jackofallchem]

... I suspect that when things don't go well between between academics and journalists, the problem is sometimes arrogant condescension on the part of the academics, who tend to treat journalists as if they were idiots.  No doubt some of them are, but many are intelligent, responsible people who truly want to educate the public about important issues.  Just because a journalist often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her general audience (just as a professor often has to simplify complex ideas for his/her students in an introductory course), that doesn't necessarily mean that the journalist himself/herself doesn't understand the academician's work.

What you don't understand tallec is the difference between ignorance and malevolence.  You may think the journalists are intelligent, but if they are ignorant about the topic, they cannot properly simplify the concepts.  No, it isn't malevolent, but it looks similar. 
I often cringe when I read an article about a scientific topic written by a journalist.  The series of articles about the Large Hadron Collider last year were especially horrifying.  It is even worse when you realize that the reporters are just trying to paraphrase the press releases that CERN sent them. There is no way I would talk to a reporter about a scientific topic any more complicated than the metric system and maybe not even that.

In the distant past, a reporter did a story on a project I was associated with.  When it finally came out, it was so distorted and unintelligible that I tried to find out what I could do to fix it.  I was worried that our reputations would take a big hit if people really thought that the words in quotes were things we actually said (quotes that basically read like "molecules are a special type of atom that can cure disease").  The article also misidentified one researcher using the title of a top administrator.   An older and wiser colleague told me not to worry.  Everyone knows that journalists just make up their stories, quotes included.  If you try to correct a journalist, they will do a hatchet job on you claiming you are being arrogant and condescending.

[mozman]

Everyone knows that journalists just make up their stories, quotes included.  If you try to correct a journalist, they will do a hatchet job on you claiming you are being arrogant and condescending.

Everyone does NOT "know" this.  In my experience, journalists are, in the vast majority, principled professionals who do none of these things.  Every journalist I have worked with has taken pains to ensure that they are reporting things accurately and don't mind being corrected.

If you constantly have these issues with reporters, maybe the problem is you? 

Or maybe you need to interact with a better class of journalist?

mm

[temporaryname]

What you don't understand tallec is the difference between ignorance and malevolence.  You may think the journalists are intelligent, but if they are ignorant about the topic, they cannot properly simplify the concepts.  No, it isn't malevolent, but it looks similar. 
I often cringe when I read an article about a scientific topic written by a journalist.  The series of articles about the Large Hadron Collider last year were especially horrifying.  It is even worse when you realize that the reporters are just trying to paraphrase the press releases that CERN sent them. There is no way I would talk to a reporter about a scientific topic any more complicated than the metric system and maybe not even that.

<snip>

That's why it is your job, as the person who does understand the concepts, to simplify it for them. If you put it in language they can use in their reporting without having to paraphrase, you won't have to worry about it being interpreted wrongly, after all.

[rowan1]

I also have to talk to the media all the time.  I find it a mixed bag. 

I have been misquoted, I have even had a reproter completly make up something that cast a negative light on our program and attribute it to me!  The editor refused to print a retraction despite the fact that the reporter did not have any reference to the quote in his notes.  Her stand was that it was a case of he said, she said.  I couldn't prove I didn't say it so the quote stood.  Since then I insist on them recording the interview and a review of notes on any quotes I give.  My field has a big PR aspect to it and it comes with the territory. 

Despite that one truly horrible interview, I have had a number of interviews that were great and created interest in the show or program we were running.  I like radio interviews over TV or newspaper interviews.