Thursday, 2 July 2009

a. Plenary sessions

b. Parallel sessions

d. Press Briefings and Fringe Events

e. Breakfasts/Lunches/Receptions

The last few years have witnessed seismic changes in the world media, through the twin economic and electronic upheavals. But what will our working world look like in a decade from now? As our media platforms continue to multiply -- print, video, web, twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, Kindle and mobile phones -- and our audiences fragment, regroup, disperse and re-gather into new mass mediums, where will science journalists belong? A panel of top editors from the BBC, The Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American, describe their visions of the global future for our craft.

How are blogs changing the way science news develops and is reported? The commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will offer a telling case study over the next few years. Who will be first with news of the fabled Higgs Boson, and how will we know if they're right?

Science journalists insist on promising their audiences a better world. Reading through a few issues of any science magazine gives one the impression that all the problems in the world are now (or will soon be) solved with the help of science. But do science journalists really give accurate and trustworthy reports from the fields of science and technology, or do they give ungrounded promises? And, are these promises biased by economical, national, political, or religious motives? This session will address this issue from four points of view-- historic, geographic, economic, and cultural. The aim is to show how science journalism's often unbridled optimism, even if well-intended, may actually benefit ideological, religious, or chauvinistic interests more it does than the public—and to suggest ways journalists can avoid falling into these "promise-traps".