Collin R. Skocik

In the past few days, I've heard some comments made on the news that really surprised me. I'm not going to name particular networks or anchors, but it seems to me the media has a responsibility to educate and inform accurately, and yet news networks mishandle the facts to the extent that I don't trust anything I hear.

For example, a meteorologist was describing how the rotation of the Earth causes the Coraolis winds, and how if the Earth were to stop rotating, we wouldn't have any weather. Then he joked that we wouldn't have any gravity either, which wouldn't be good, ha-ha. I know it's a common misconception that the Earth's rotation causes gravity, but it seems to me when you're a media personality upon whom people rely for accurate information, you'd take more care than to perpetuate such a flagrant scientific error -- ESPECIALLY if you're a meteorologist. I would have thought a meteorologist would know better.

If anyone reading this (if there IS anyone) is wondering what then is causing gravity, the answer is that any object with mass has gravity. It's fundamental to every atom. The more mass and density an object has, the greater its gravitational energy. Einstein deomstrated through general relativity that gravity and inertia are actually the same phenomenon, that if you're in a spaceship accelerating at the rate of one gee, the energy exterted on your body is identical to the energy exterted when you're on the surface of the Earth. As a matter of fact, if the Earth were to stop rotating, I would think the gravitational pull would become a bit stronger, because then you wouldn't have centrifugal force.

This morning they were reporting on Pluto having been voted out of its membership amongst the planets of the Solar System, and they were wondering, well, if it's not a planet, then what is it? And one of the anchors suggested, "A moon of Saturn?" I can only hope he was joking, though it's hard to tell sometimes. I would expect the rankest layman, let alone a news anchor, to know that Pluto is twice again the distance from the Sun as Saturn.

I'm not going to go too much into the media-wide mismanagement of the reports of the Korean scientist who faked his stem cell results. That issue has been tackled elsewhere, and more eloquently and knowledgably than I could. Suffice it to say, the media was clearly looking for a sensational story rather than accurately representing the facts.

And that's only issues related to science. Granted, that's a subject they're more likely to screw up than most others, since many people -- even scientists -- don't understand science. But there are other things. Anchors inject their opinions into their stories, sacrifice accuracy for the sake of puns, simplify for lowest-common-denominator viewer intelligence, and even sometimes neglect or modify facts in the face of mass ignorance. It's troubling.

But nothing beats something I heard the other day -- it wasn't a news network, but even so it still has me chuckling -- the dingbat host continually referred to "Ceylon, formerly Sri Lanka." Utterly fascinating. Well, I'm going to go take a walk down Pablo Beach, formerly Jacksonville Beach...