PRINCETON ACM / IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY CHAPTERS
MAY 1999 ANNUAL DINNER MEETING
Science and Technology Reporting in the Television Age
Bev Aaron
This meeting will be an informal discussion of the following
issues posed by the speaker:
-
"Science and scientists are fascinating subjects for a
television reporter. It seems that science has a strange
relationship to the popular media. Scientific work
requires a degree of obsessiveness -- focusing on a narrow
problem for a long period of time. And scientific work is
often affected by non-scientific influences: political,
financial, and sociological."
-
"The narrow focus of scientific work creates a difficult
problem in reporting about science. The efforts of the
mainstream media to communicate science is wondrous
strange. Blind as most media people are to the true
forces that constitute science, we don't always convey the
correct picture. We often (myself included) communicate
Aardvark when the reality might be '49 Hudson."
-
"Mainstream television journalism is a fleeting glance at
the world, whereas science tries to view things in a more
sustained and in-depth way. In many ways the scientific
vision is bad for the television business: it's not
viewer friendly. And yet scientists need journalists of
the mainstream kind to tell their story; and journalists
in turn need stories to tell. You need our venue: we
need your material. And each of us may be completely
mistaken in what we think we're getting."
-
"Why is this so? And how can such an odd couple achieve
maximum symbiosis? What do TV producers need from
scientists? And what do scientists need from them? And
how might the dawning of HDTV and other new information
technologies be about to knock the traditional
relationship of journalist and scientist into a cocked
website?"
Bev Aaron works for WPVI-TV, the ABC television station in
Philadelphia. Since 1978, he has been the producer of
WPVI's news magazine program Prime Time Weekend, which
focuses on environmental, entreprenurial, and medical
issues. He is interested in a wide range of scientific
topics and in the interactions between the world of science
and scientists with the world at large.
Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999, 6:30 social, 7:00 dinner, 7:30 lecture
Location: Sunny Garden Restaurant, 15 Farber Road, Princeton, NJ
Cost: $17.50 per person (including tax and gratuity). This is
a $5 discount from the actual cost thanks to the chapter subsidizing
this dinner meeting.
Information: call information number (609) 924-8704,
Dennis Mancl (908) 582-7086, or John DeGood (609) 734-2028
On-line info: http://www.acm.org/chapters/princetonacm
Directions to Sunny Garden:
From Princeton, take US 1 South. Pass the Market Fair shopping center and
the Meadow Road traffic light, then take the first right onto Farber Road,
a small side street. The restaurant is on the right.
RESERVATIONS AND ADVANCE PAYMENT REQUIRED. Fill out and
mail in the form below.
Dinner meeting reservation form
-------------------------------
Make my reservation for the annual ACM Dinner meeting on May 20:
Name: _______________________ Phone number: ________________
Menu for the ACM Dinner meeting: soup, family-style Chinese
banquet with variety of meat, seafood and vegetarian
appetizers and entrees, rice, tea, dessert. BYOB.
Send your check for $17.50 per person and this form before May 14 to:
PRINCETON CHAPTER OF ACM
Treasurer
PO Box 1324
Princeton, NJ 08542