MISSING BEATS
while i was waiting for my professor (or whoever there was who would sign my form-5), i re-read a copy of PJR Reports in the dept.'s sala about the missing beats.
to the unitiated, the missing beats are: agriculture, science and technology, education, health -- you get the picture.
actually, it has been my frustration -- and i guess my old colleagues' frustration (tama ba, barefoot tennis, rayts?) also -- that there is no room for science journalism in this country. we are subjected to stories that are scientifically incorrect and/or shallow. or subjected to lots of mudslinging stories.
or kris, gretchen or ruffa stories.
i remember reading an article about the brouhaha over the supposedly amoeba-infested waters of boracay due to the alleged faulty sewerage system years ago...the reporter mistakenly identified amoeba as "a kind of bacteria". dear lord, bacteria are prokaryotes wheareas the amoeba is a protozoan -- a eukaryote. from different domains. it's like saying a human (animalia) is "a kind of mushroom" (eumycota). at least humans and fungi are both eukaryotic.
sorry for being OC about this but newspapers are used by students (who do not have access to the internet) as reference materials. they refer to newspapers for additional knowledge about who is the secretary of trade, what is the capital of turkey and other stuff. before the advent of web 1.0, my teachers made us read the papers to increase our stored knowledge.
it's so frustating for me because i am a science journalist. or was. i took at least 24 units of science courses during my undergrad years (hello bio 150, good bye zoo 155!) so i would develop an appreciation of science and make science more palatable to the masses. close to 3 years i tried have my popularized (i.e. layman's science) stories published in mainstream media but i guess they love mudslinging better.
sadly, the philippines is not like the more developed countries where they can afford to run stories on the human genome project or medical stories that readers digest publish. we seldom read see stories in our dailies why the world's weather these days has gone haywire (watch al gore and his power point presentation). that's why we still have mothers who still believe in feeding their children lizards' eggs to cure asthma or use breast milk for sore eyes.
that's why we have science journalists confined only in DOST and DA.
without sounding so nerdy about it, i hope that we could dish out science and technology stories for the masses, like what Time and Newsweek publish.
however, these stories are not sexy and won't sell papers. so my wish is doomed.
