Is science journalism in the USA a bit…racist?
Imagine this. You’ve done some fabulous research. You’ve got it published in a peer-reviewed journal. You’ve managed to share that research on social media or through a press release. A journalist picks it up and writes about your work.
Amazing!
You read the article, excited (and maybe a little nervous) to see how the journalist portrayed your work. They’ve done a good job. Except, nobody will know that it was you who did the work because your name isn’t mentioned anywhere.
If you’ve had your research covered by a journalist for a USA-based publication and have a minority-ethnic name, this scenario may be quite familiar to you. If research by Hao Peng, Misha Teplitskiy, and David Jurgens (University of Michigan) is anything to go by, you’re far from alone.
The researchers analysed over 223,000 science news stories from 288 USA-based publications. These stories covered over 100,000 scientific papers. They found that authors with minority-ethnic names were less likely to be mentioned than those with Anglo names. In particular, those with East Asian and African names were most likely to have their name omitted.
So what’s going on? Hao Peng and colleagues have a few thoughts - and raise a few questions:
The study didn’t look into whether journalists reached out to authors before writing their articles or not. Are journalists less likely to reach out to authors who don’t have Anglo names because they are concerned about their English language skills? We don’t know.
Are journalists just a bit biased? The study shows that African and East Asian-named authors are more likely to have their names replaced by their institution. “This substitution effect likely reveals that journalists place less rhetorical value on authors with minority names,” write Peng and colleagues.
University press releases themselves are less likely to mention non-Anglo names. Since it is common for press release material to be reused in news stories, does the university have some responsibility here, too?
General news outlets (they give “New York Times” and “Washington Post” as examples) are the publications most likely to drop East-Asian and African author names from their articles.
