El Periodismo científico como paradigma de la «noticia acatamiento» : una demostración desde las fuentes y una alerta de sus peligros

Abstract

This article tries to demonstrate the Furio Colombos statement that scientific journalism is the better example of something called «subordinate news», which is a wrong professional behaviour very widespread in present journalism. According with Colombo, this phenomenon happens when sources have a strong level of credibility themselves, so it contributes journalists do not try a proper contrast statements declared by this sources. Colombo exemplifies his hypothesis with social sciences such as sociology. However, in this article we try to extend his reflexion to the natural sciences field. First of all, we analyze what types of sources are used in the Spanish scientific journalism. We found that the majority of them (48,1 %) come from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the bigger public research organization, ruled by the government (so by politicians). The second sources more cited by Spanish journalists are scientific journals (Nature and Science). In this article, we try to describe why journalists abide so often by this type of sources and the consequences of these attitudes in the future of scientific information.