5th World Conference of Science Journalists

From the 16 – 20th April 2007, Melbourne hosted the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists. Lending our support, veski fellows utilised the opportunity of over 400 visiting journalists to Victoria to highlight their Australian research outcomes in world first stories.

Representatives from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas built their network of contacts so they can report effectively on science and science issues in the 21st Century.

Highlights of the conference included:

• Science: climate change, emerging diseases, quantum computing, polar science, and the future of nuclear energy.
• Issues: fraud, balance, biasing of information and the challenges of reporting from within and outside emerging economies.
• Workshops: reporting on clinical trials, dealing with risk, information management in a crisis, when to trust peer review, editing and creating journalism associations.

Participants included science editors from the Economist, Financial Times, Asahi Shinbun, the editors-in-chief of Nature and of Scientific American, senior reporters from BBC TV, radio and World Service, and some 50 journalists from developing and emerging countries.

The 5th World Conference of Science Journalists is an initiative of the World Federation of Science Journalists and the Australian Science Communicators.