Comments on: Egyptological theories magically become fact in news stories

By: Scrabcake

Scrabcake — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 05:00:05 +0000

I totally agree with you…I watched a history channel special on Nefertiti last night and cringed at every oversimplification and presentation of theory as fact. I had a pretty much permanent grimmace on my face throughout the show. The worst was the discovery channel’s documentary on the mummy of Nefertiti. That was just painful.
This isn’t really limited to Egyptology. The media has figured out that people will pay to have their news in easy to digest, oversimplified packages with shinny wrapping. Why bother presenting theories as theories when theories as fact make a much more marketable and exciting headline?

By: Margaret

Margaret — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:22:33 +0000

I agree. I’ve noticed other examples recently, and it’s not simply wrong information, but misrepresentation. For example, there was a BBC article about Facebook recently (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6236628.stm) where what the BBC called ‘a long-term research project’, making it seem all official, was in fact just a blog article that even the author stressed was not formal research, clearly stating: ‘I want to highlight that this is not an academic article’.

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:50:51 +0000

Unfortunatey, I think this is true of more than just Egyptology. For example, I regularly read utterly misleading stories about physics in the news media. (The worst culprit, surprisingly, seems to be New Scientist, and especially whoever writes the text for the magazine’s covers.)