Arab science journalists got together for the first meeting of the World Federation of Science Journalists’ (WFSJ) training programme SjCOOP

The meeting, held in Beirut, Lebanon, brought together all the Arab science journalists taking part in the programmed, representing 12 different Arab states.

SjCOOP is based on a mentor/mentee arrangement, which spans over two years. This meeting is the first time for the mentees to meet their mentors in person.

The group started their day with a discussion on the state, potential and pitfalls of science journalism in the region – a topic that has been exhausted over the past few years without much discussion on how to actually address these issues, rather than just outlining them.

The problem that moust science journalists see is resistance by their editors and editors-in-chief of their publications towards publishing science stories. The age old journalism motto “if it bleeds it leads” is pretty much in effect here. And when it comes to the Middle East, what bleeds is politics, and that take up pretty much most of the daily papers – followed closely by football news.

The science journalists are obviously passionate about their work, and would like to inform people about science issues that are critical to the region, such as climate change, water scarcity and the lack of collaborative scientific research in the region – and to do that they need more space – preferably on front pages of newspapers.

However, a problem that is usually overlooked is the quality of the science articles that are being written. Serious scientific topics are often approached very superficially and non-analytically by journalists who know nothing about the subject matter. This leads, in a best case scenario, to a worthless, uninformative article. The results can be much worse, such as misleading information and generating misplaced fear.

Quantity is the only problem that science journalists can see, but there is also a serious question of quality that cannot be ignored. It is just as important – if not more.

If Arab science journalists were to get their wish – if they wake up tomorrow and find that all their editors are clamouring for science stories real quick – what will happen? If they continue churning out stories on a business-as-usual basis then they might be putting in one more nail into the coffin of science journalism. That would be most unfortunate; especially since the Arab region does have high potential for science journalism growth, unlike most regions in the West.

Writing poor articles does, in a way, put science journalists in a never-ending cycle. Editors and publishers do not want low-quality pieces, so they decrease their science stories output, feeding back into the main problems that the journalists themselves feel.

So how do you solve the problem? How do you get science journalists to write amazing stories that will have their editors dying for more? I, for one, certainly hope that SjCOOP is the answer.