Have you ever been in a situation where a story whose details you know is being retold in your presence with a lot of inconsistencies, but you have to stay silent because based on the setting, you cannot comment?
This is the pain scientists suffer when journalists misrepresent facts. Yet their failure or inability to counter misinformation and disinformation due to bureaucracies, or lack of platforms may expose the masses, especially existing governments, which are also tasked with civic education, are slow or lack resources to timely act, including on their recommendations. The trust in media is sometimes based on assumption that journalists know everything. When they misinform, even once, seeds of doubt are planted. According to Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, at least 58 per cent of the public struggle to distinguish between truth and lies, especially on digital platforms.
It says there has been a substantial increase in the percentages since 2023, with the figures varying from continent to continent. This can only worsen, with the “prevalence” of Artificial Intelligence, which is aiding misinformation and disinformation.
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Passing the right information that leads to accurate action therefore requires everyone’s hand on deck. The Fourth Estate must be aided to do its heavy duty. As a beneficiary of a UK government grant, by the time I was done at the just concluded World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in Pretoria, I was convinced that more must be done for global science to make sense to people in the grassroots. It means working together with journalists to simplify jargon, and help relate studies to actual happenings. This is how the grassroots will benefit from global discourses around climate change, oceans, forests, wildlife corridors, or health, as more interactions happen between them and scientists, lawyers, policy makers, economists and technocrats.
What is to a scientist data, presented in maps, figures, or images, is to the local communities possible solutions, including locally-led, to their water stress, disease prevalence, food insecurity, climate disasters, forced migration – like is happening in flooded parts of Rift Valley, Sri Lanka or Southern Africa. But our stories must start locally, because that is also where scientists get information.
An informed journalist will be in a better position to counter disinformation, and even identify flawed methodologies in scientific studies’ findings. Journalists must be enabled to air conflicting science opinions, recognise the place of local knowledge in solving problems, follow up on related policies and implementation of study recommendations, and question actions that appear to solve one problem, but introduce new ones, such as use of fossil fuels, or unsubstantiated biotechnology in solving energy poverty and food insecurity respectively.
This was the first time the WCSJ was taking place in Africa, and with it came numerous opportunities, including for local scientists and journalists from around the world to interact and connect better some of the global scientific issues to local narratives. The reality in many a newsroom today is lack of resources to build capacity, or fund investigative journalism.
Journalists want to build trust by listening more to communities, as they translate the complex issues in the science world without diluting intended meaning. The bridge between global science and local narratives lies in equipping newsrooms with technical skills that also allows them to interpret studies independently. Building capacity of journalists, will equip newsrooms with tools to frame their stories around solutions. It is not true that science journalists know everything. Teach them.
The writer is a Contributing Editor at Mongabay. [email protected]
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By Lynet Otieno