Jensen, E. A. (2010). Between credulity and scepticism: Envisaging the fourth estate in 21st Century science journalism. Media, Culture & Society, 32 (4): 615-630. DOI: 10.1177/0163443710367695
The issue of human cloning has sparked a long-running scientific and political controversy, which has played out in books, films and news media for the better part of a century (Haran et al., 2008; Jensen, 2009). The recent controversy over human cloning has been framed by news coverage (e.g. Jensen and Weasel, 2006; Kitzinger and Williams, 2005), and “decoded” by worldwide publics through the lens of particular cultural contexts (e.g. Hall, 1980; Jensen, in press b; Weasel and Jensen, 2005). Although human cloning for live birth has faced overwhelmingly negative reactions according to public opinion polling in numerous countries, “biomedical” or “therapeutic” cloning research has been much more positively perceived in both the US and Britain (Evans, 2002; Nisbet, 2004). Therapeutic cloning research is still legal in the US, despite a number of attempts by the then-Republican Congress and President from 2002 to 2004. Moreover this research has been granted dedicated funding by several individual states, including California and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the UK government has fully embraced this technology since late 2000, citing hopes for cures and possible long-term economic benefits. These biogovernmental outcomes are tied to the debate over therapeutic cloning that took place in the Anglo-American press in the years since Dolly the cloned sheep was introduced to the world as the first mammalian clone in 1997. In order to examine journalistic credulity and scepticism in the mediation of the issue, the present article adduce data from interviews with Anglo-American journalists (n = 18) covering the issue of therapeutic cloning. Scientifically, therapeutic cloning combines the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology that created Dolly the sheep in Scotland (Wilmut et al. 1997)
