Conversation

Little bit of background on experts in the news:

Back when I was still in university, sometimes my professors appeared in news articles. More often than not, they didn't appear, but the same 2-5 others experts of the country appeared (again and again and again).

As students we asked some professors how this all came to be. Who appeared where and how? We got the following explanation:

A news outlet decides they want to create an article or video. The tone and conclusion of the piece have already been decided. Then they contact many experts in that field. For example, a query they would send out is: "Hello, we're looking for experts to talk to about X."

Not many experts respond, but some do. The query they will get in response will be something like: "Thanks for your interest, we are looking for someone to confirm that X leads to Y and Z."

My professors told me that in their naive days, they would still keep interacting and correcting and suggesting other takes. "Actually, Y and Z aren't like that, it's too simplistic, but I could talk about A and B and how it leads to maybe Y in your article."

What would happen? They were ghosted of course. 😂

Among many experts, news outlets would eventually always find one or two people willing to confirm their shitty clickbait shit. And once these experts work along, they get contacted more frequently than others. Experts who keep correcting and being difficult, aren't contacted again.

I studied in a very niche field and I know all experts in that field in my country. I started to recognize who would work along and what they would gain from it. I now know who's blacklisted and who is being kept out of the news and why.

This has been in the back of my mind during the #pandemic. I assume things work the same way among virologists, epidemiologists, and other related experts. It's frustrating because they carry the title of expert, they come across as knowledgeable and the media spreads their words everywhere. It's made to appear as if these experts represent their whole field and all others in it.

But how many experts have these news outlets had to contact before finding someone who was willing to collaborate with their minimizing?

#covid #covid19 #CovidIsNotOver #COVIDisAirborne