Tim Radford, chairman, greeted the audience and introduced himself and the speakers.

At the outset he stressed that in Britain everything is written according to the audience – they dictate their expectations. 

Nadia El-Awady, Program Manager & Founder, WFSJ & Arab Science Journalists Association, Egypt

She outlined specific case – how the media in Egypt covered the swine flu (May, 2009). This case revealed weaknesses of the Egyptian media. Egypt has a special background which creates a certain state of mind and leads to chaos. It can be illustrated by following steps:

23, April – WHO began reporting cases of N1H1.

28, April – Egyptian parliament called for slaughter of the pigs.

29, April – Slaughter started by presidential decree.

Background:

   1. Egypt is the only Islamic country that has a significant pig population: 100 000 – 300 000 heads. Consumption of pork is prohibited by Islam but there is a large tourism industry and 10 % of population is Christian. Majority of the pigs belong to the Christian minority.
   2. Egyptian government received much criticism in the past few years – there was huge rockslide which killed 100 people, fires which burned parliamentary house, ferry sinking which killed hundreds of people. This created a lot of mistrust to the government.
   3. Plans to remove pigs were here since 2006 already because pigs are not bred on farms but live with people in their homes in slums. People who have the pigs are garbage collectors who bring the garbage to pigs to eat. This creates sanitary problems. The plans though were never carried out.
   4. There exists tension between the Christians and the Muslims in the past few years.
   5. There are concerns over corruption in every section of the society.
   6. As a result Egyptian government involved itself into the drastic response to the imminent threat – they felt the pig flu virus would mutate in the pig and become dangerous.

At the beginning a showreel was played introducing stories by Jonica Newby, science writer from Australia. These stories covered various fields of science: Medieval Islamic Scientist, Cosmologists, Time and Science, Urban Myth, Story of Oil, Chemistry of Mud, and How the Body Wakes Up. Jonica stressed that although it seems that science TV is thriving, TV-stations during this crisis are more or less closing their science divisions and budget cuts appeared in the beginning of this year. As a consequence filming is not carried out in studios, it has to be done in the natural environment.

Reporting on creationism was one of the hottest debates during the WCSJ in London. Science journalists from all around the world listened to the views of James Randerson, environment website editor at the Guardian newspaper and Michael Reiss, academic of science education and a priest in the Church of England. 

The main question of the session “Balance not needed? Science journalism and the reporting of creationism” was if it was true that science journalists give more space or weight to the scientific view when reporting about creationism. 

WCSJ 2009 wound up with a final plenary discussion led by Pallab Ghosh, BBC science correspondent and president of the World Federation of Science Journalists, and three prominent figures in science policy development. John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) to the UK government, Patrick Cunningham, CSA to the Irish government and Tidu Maini, Executive Chairman of Qatar Science & Technology Park, who each gave an overview of their roles in science policy and advice to government in their respective countries.