Western media ignores Arab science: Writer Tuesday, 28 June 2011 01:57

DOHA: The western media does not report correctly on Arab science, said Rim Turkmani, a science writer yesterday speaking at the opening session of the World Conference of Science Journalists 2011.

“Arab Muslim science is ignored or underestimated in the western media,” she said, speaking on ‘Unveiling Arab Science.’

The opening plenary session was held under David Dobbs, an American freelance writer as the moderator and Waleed A Shobakky, a scince writer, Homayoun Kheyn, a freelancer for BBC from Australia and Iran and Ehsan Masood, Research Fortnight in UK.

The participants said that science in much of the Mideast region operates under unique cultural, economic, and religious constraints. If journalists are to intelligently report and write about it, they must understand these constraints - and sometimes work around them, they said.

They said that historical tensions between belief and reason sometimes complicate scientific inquiry here. Meanwhile, both science and science reporting also face constraints imposed by autocratic cultures; economic, educational, and infrastructure problems; a traditional lack of transparency; and relative weakness in both scientific publishing tradition and the sorts of public-information-office pipelines that Western reporters take for granted.

The Peninsula