Embargoes have become a hot topic of discussion amongst UK science journalists, in response to a 'life on mars' front page story in the UK's Sun newspaper. Today the UK Press Gazette reports on the whole issue
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42903&c=1 Did the life on mars story break an embargo on material issued through online science news service EurekAlert!? Or was this a case of good old fashioned journalism? The upshot has been a 6 month ban for the Sun newspaper on embargoed material from EurekAlert! and a debate that continues to rage on the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) e-mail list. Latest posts on the ABSW e-mail list suggest that EurekAlert! banned The Sun even though they had no evidence that the story was based on their embargoed material.
At the ABSW AGM (Tuesday 21 Jan 2009) the controversy resulted in the establishment of a working group on embargoes that will report to the WCSJ2009 in London. Ahead of the current furor the WCSJ2009 had already identified embargoes as a 'hot topic'. The session,
Embargoes: Friend or Foe? includes Geoff Watts (Broadcaster), David Whitehouse (Author and Broadcaster) and Richard Horton (Editor, The Lancet) with further speakers and panelists to be confirmed.
Labels: embargoes science journalism
