The underestimated public: Comment on Lehmkuhl et al. (2012), 'Scheduling science on television'

摘要

In their article "Scheduling science on television", based on the project "European TV science programming", Markus Lehmkuhl and his colleagues supply us with valuable data about the conditions and the status quo of specialised science programming in European television. Their approach leads away from a science-centred perspective which "repeat[s] over and over problems science faces with journalism" (Lehmkuhl et al., 2012: 3); instead it focuses on a media-centred perspective which explains the status quo of science programmes as output of organisational decisions. "From this perspective, a television science programme for example can be neither a reflection nor a distortion of what is going on 'out there' but is, rather, a reflection of the practices of workers guided by established editorial concepts" (Lehmkuhl et al., 2012: 3).