I know a bit about science, certainly enough to be aware that media coverage of science is on the whole terrible. I used to think that this was a specific problem with science coverage; however, now that I know a little bit about language, I find that the media coverage of this is also, in general, crap.
This makes me wonder: are there any specialists in any field who are happy with the way their subject is treated in the news? I suspect I’m taking far too many media stories on trust just because I lack the background knowledge needed to see that they’re rubbish.
I can reliably inform you that most technology news reporting is utterly atrocious. Rory Cellan-Jones is pretty good but most of the rest are imbeciles.
On a related note, what narks me even more is John Humhrys and his ridiculous pride in his own technophobia. "You can 'E Mail' us on bbc dot co dot UK or some such nonsense…" etc. What a tit. As if having no basic internet literacy these days is any less shameful than not being able to read and write. Hurrah for Eddie Mair!
[Steps down from the soap box...]
On one level, I think historians would be happy if history was being discussed in the media at all (much as most scientists, however much they complain about science stories, are on some level glad of the publicity – in fact, they or their university's press office probably had to go to quite a lot of effort to get their work mentioned at all). I think it's more of a problem when things that aren't proper science ("Scientists at De Montfort university have discovered the formula for the perfect sandwich", etc.) get portrayed as if they are, often completely representing the nature and content of science and/or making it seem trivial. As well as making people think scientists spend all their time searching for the equation for the perfect kiss/Sunday/pint of beer etc, this probably stops some interesting stories being in the news (although in fairness, if journalists didn't have these stories they'd probably just put some other, not science-related, crap in there instead).
The same is true of history to some extent – see "historian Dan Snow" as an example (he's Peter Snow's son, he studied history at undergraduate level at Oxford, he presents TV programmes for the BBC, he's supposed to be sexy in an Oxbridge sort of way, he's NOT A HISTORIAN). Although much as it pains me to see some preppy muppet with no original research to his name getting a TV show because the producer went to Oxford with him and his dad, I guess I should be glad that he's making people interested in history, even if it is him wandering round battlefields looking windswept and rejoicing in not being one of those musty old academic historians (note to BBC producers: they look like that because they have to spend decades in an office with books, doing something called "research").
So anyway, that's my rant.
I'm glad to see I'm inspiring such rants! That's true about history: at least with science it's perceived difficulty scares amateurs off a bit, while with history anybody thinks they can have a go (I'm thinking of Boris Johnson here).