The Media Marketplace for Garbled Demography

摘要

DEMOGRAPHY CAN PRODUCE stories that appeal to mass media journalists, more often in some countries than in others. Yet as for many other fields of scientific research, there are fundamental cultural differences between demographic researchers and journalists, and an equally large divergence in the incentive structures faced by professionals in these two domains. Although hardly desired by either group, these differences in cultural norms and incentives provide a powerful marketplace for garbled demography in the mass media.