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Interview with Tom Feilden

Science and Environment Correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (full biog)






Do you think it is ok for journalists from a non-science background to cover science stories?

TF: I’m from a non-scientific background, and although obviously it’s going to help if you do, I think the important thing really is about grasping the scientific process and how it works. Once you have grasped that you’ve made a start.

For instance, having a background in biology isn’t necessarily going to help you with nuclear physics or astronomy. You know it isn’t necessarily the case that once you know something about science, you’re going to know the ins and outs of every discipline.

I don’t think you can say that you must have a scientific background. You have to understand the principles of what a particular process is and where it starts from, but so long as you are open to that idea and you are willing to embark on a very steep learning curve then I don’t see that there is a problem. And in another sense, it is quite important not to be too immersed in the science because your audience isn’t and your responsibility is to them, rather than the scientists and journalists. That’s your duty, to communicate, so it’s very important to know, or to understand, the kind of questions that your audience might have about a particular piece of work. You might get a bit divorced from that if you were one scientist talking to another so I think it can be very valuable not to be.

I don’t want to put too much emphasis on that. Obviously it’s useful if you know what you are talking about and you do have to be of aware of going off on a story or an angle on a story that isn’t really viable. You have to watch out for that. But if you are aware of the pitfalls, I think there is no reason why a good arts student can’t be a good science journalist.

Can you take us through a day in the life of being a journalist on the Today programme?

TF: My job really divides into two roles. The BBC has a news science correspondent team that covers all the science stories for bulletins and all the different programmes, so Five Live, the Ten o’clock and Six o’clock News on TV, radio bulletins, Newsbeat - all of those programmes. But I have a much more specific role on Today, to try and do stories that get behind the headlines.

The idea is that I come in with some stories that you are not going to hear about a report being launched the following Monday. I might look at that report and say that what is really interesting about it is what you are not being told, or that the reason why this report is coming in now is far more intricate and interesting than just the fact that it is appearing. You often find the situation where a BBC correspondent will be saying “This is happening today” and then I’ll be doing a piece that says “This is why this is happening today”. It doesn’t always happen, but that is what my role is supposed to be.

When I’ve interviewed newsprint journalists they say that they come in the morning and they actually listen to the Today programme and take their stories from there! But you have to get your stories out in the mornings.

TF: Yes, we’re a preview programme so the idea is we are supposed to set the agenda for the rest of the day. I’m very happy to hear that a newspaper journalist would listen to us and think about writing something for tomorrow; that makes me feel all warm inside! It doesn’t happen that often; I think that they are being a bit generous! But yes, the idea is that we would be saying “This is going to happen later today or this is important for you to know this morning” and then through the day you’ll find it actually happens and the World at One or PM or whoever it is, picks it up and goes “This has now happened and this is what we think about it” later in the day.



Practically how does that work? How do you find out all the information?

TF: Well it varies. A lot of the time it is possible to predict that something is going to be happening next week. For instance, I am working on a story now for Saturday because it is World Laboratory Animals Day where the animal right activists are going to be having another demonstration in Oxford to mark their campaign against that laboratory opening. I am trying to do a piece saying this may or may not be a big thing later today, but it is going to be nothing like the 20,000 people that used to turn out in Trafalgar Square in the 1970’s to mark World Animal Laboratory Day. I’m looking at where the Animal Rights movement is going and whether it still commands the support it used to. Whether violence has actually undermined their broader public support and looking back at the demo or rally in Oxford in favour of medical research and asking has something changed? Has some sort of tipping point been reached where people are willing to say that we have to stand up for good medical research and there are good reasons for doing it. In a sense there is a peg for doing it on Saturday morning, but it’s a much broader piece about where we are now with the whole issue of animal research.

So would you say that a lot of your stories have a much longer research period so you don’t get a story the night before and get it out the next day?

TF: Well inevitably you do. There’ll be something that happened this afternoon and then I’ll say that we must do the implications of that tomorrow morning because it is still going to be a story. That obviously happens and everyone’s best laid plans for having a nice leisurely week working on a package for Saturday get torn asunder. That happens all the time but that is just the nature of the job really. Part of the fun of doing it is that tomorrow I could be pulled off and have to do some other story and then come and try and scramble back to my thoughtful piece for Saturday morning, late on Friday.

When you have live debates, do you organise those?

TF: Well most of the Today programme is a live presenter led programme. It means you have two people sitting in a studio, John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie, or Sarah Montague or whoever it is, and they do most of it and I tend to do bits in between. It can feel a bit like being the poly-filler filling the bits in between. But on the whole it’s a live interview led programme.

I will offer advice and say this is a really important story but there is no reason why I have to do it in a convoluted package with eight different people. You could just do it as a straightforward interview next Wednesday morning. You know there is a good story or a good reason for doing it in this way. So I offer advice and say you ought to talk to Professor So-and-so about this story. Or if you want to do something on bird flu, here is an interesting angle, why don’t you ring up so-and-so, I know that he’s very interested in that or he’s doing research on it at the moment. So I feed into the mix to support that live presenter led programme.

A lot of people that I talk to will know that they might talk to me initially about that idea and then find that they don’t get interviewed by me but they get interviewed live on the programme by John Humphrys or Jim Naughtie.



When you are suggesting people for those kind of programmes, do you choose them because they are coming from opposite spectrums? Because we get a lot of young scientists saying that when they listen to these programmes on the radio…

TF: Debates are very polarised

Yes, when in actual fact they are not really. Eighty per cent of the science community will agree with one side and only 20% will agree with the other.

TF: Well those are slightly different questions. In the first situation it is a programme. There is no getting away from the fact that even the most po-faced newspaper is still trying to engage and entertain its reader. It is valid to have a debate and put people who fundamentally disagree with each other about a particular point on the air and let them hammer it out live for the entertainment and education of the audience.

What I think you are probably getting at is a slightly different issue about fact and, for instance, the truth of the climate change issue. A problem that that kind of programming has a tendency to fall into is when it appears to challenge what is actually true or false in a particular assumption. Climate change is an obvious one there and I think that the BBC, along with a lot of other journalists, has to hold its hand up and say we’ve probably given too much air time to people who are just denying the science of climate change.

I get it in the neck a lot from people who are saying ‘why do you put these people on?’ It is not always my decision, but the thing I would highlight is that we don’t necessarily put on a sceptic about climate change in order to express this view. On the whole what we are not trying to do is to debate about whether or not the science is wrong because that seems a rather sterile debate. What we often put on is an economist or someone who is not saying that the arguments about climate change are scientifically wrong, but making an economic argument about whether we wish to pay the price involved. I think there is plenty of scope for having an economic argument that asks if we want to pay the price of mitigation or do we accept a new world.

Sometimes these distinctions get blurred, and I think certainly on the Today programme and elsewhere in the BBC, we have made the mistake of putting on an economist on that basis and then asked them “Do you think climate change is happening?” which is a stupid question. I think we are probably out of that period now and I hope that we all learnt that you don’t ask an economist, who’s a sceptic, “Do you think climate change is happening?” because he’ll say no. You should ask him about his issue which is the economics and politics.

In most interviews you are the only person there and you are asked to tell the world what your wonderful research is about and it is all very straightforward, “What does your research show us?”, “What does it add to the sum of human knowledge?” and “Where do we take it from here?” These are three basic questions for most scientific interviews. Certainly people at the junior end are only going to be asked what they’ve done in their experiment and what it proves. It’s only once you’re Steve Jones or Colin Blakemore you are going to start being asked to get into a creationist argument or a climate change argument with a leading sceptic. You are not going to get asked that when you are a first year post-grad.



One of the main concerns of young scientists that comes up again and again is misrepresentation. Do you ever get feedback from scientists saying that it’s been edited so that they are saying something that they didn’t want to say? Also what can young scientists do to make sure that this doesn’t happen?

TF: I’m a bit surprised about that. Nobody’s going to edit out the word “Not” from an interview if you say “I do not agree with x” to leave “I do agree with x”. It’s so obvious that the scientist would complain. At the very least you’d get caught. Apart from my own personal integrity, you’re never going to talk to me again if I did that. So I don’t think that’s an issue realistically. I can’t imagine a situation in which I would deliberately make it out that you thought the opposite of what you think. That’s just not going to happen. Why would I do that?

If I’m coming to a story I will have an idea of what I want you to say, I’m constructing a narrative and I’ve come to you because I think you are going to say x. Now you might say something slightly different and I might think “Well I can write around it so that I can make my point and then illustrate it with you” so there is a grey area where you might feel that you were slightly pushed into a corner where you seem to be more enthusiastic for a particular position than you were. That’s the grey area.

Now in those terms, the only advice I can give you is to know who you are talking to and whether you can trust them; build up a relationship with certain journalists you are happy to talk to. Initially you have a problem if you have never met a journalist before, but think of where they work. If they ask you the same question eighteen times and you repeatedly say one thing and then you give them a slightly more consolatory answer because you’re feeling a bit sorry for the poor beleaguered journalist who’s having trouble getting you to say what they want. You know they are going to use the answer which most fits the perspective that they want to put across. And maybe you shouldn’t have spoken to them; it is your responsibility too to make sure you think about who you are talking to and don’t say it if you don’t want to say it.

Nothing works better than saying “Hang on a moment, you seem to be trying to get me to say x, I don’t believe that”. It’s very difficult then for someone to try to imply that you do without you having recourse to write to their editor. Very rarely would you feel that you’ve been so badly misrepresented I would’ve thought. There are legal redresses for that and with the BBC or one of the big national daily papers there are ways of addressing that. Blotting a journalist’s copy-book with their editor you do have some power.

Do you think it’s important to put young scientists forward? Would you talk to them?

TF: Yes, absolutely. As I say, certainly very early in your career the most that is going to happen is that you’re going to be asked to explain in words of one syllable what it is you’ve actually done that’s so clever. That will be the timbre of the piece and everyone will grin and smile and go “Wow that is really interesting”. It is only later when you are more experienced and more responsible and further up the chain that you are going to be asked questions about policy or questions that have difficult political connotations. It is very rare that a young researcher is going to be asked anything other than to recount what they’ve done in a way the audience can understand. In the early years it should be a breeze talking to me, it should be fun.



How do you respond to young scientists who are worried that they are not ‘expert’ enough for you, people who are supervisors?

TF: Well stick to what you know. If you don’t think you know or if a journalist says “What do you think of your company or your research institution’s policy on this or the way which research is going?”, don’t answer. Say “That’s not for me you’ll have to ask the professor. What I’ve done is this piece of research…” If you are not happy to answer a question don’t answer it. Talk about your work and what you want to talk about and say “I’m sorry that’s not for me” if need be.

What do you think makes a good interviewee, thinking specifically about scientists?

TF: Well you have to describe quite a complicated issue in a way that people are going to be able to get. You’re going to have to think about what is the really crucial thing or really interesting part of it. Do a bit of homework, do sit down and think ‘What do I want to say here?’ What are the things that are fun and interesting or original or novel or useful about whatever it is that I’ve done. Then you can think about ways of describing it. If you can get some nice metaphors in there that always helps.

Think of past-masters at it. Someone like Steve Jones will answer a question and he won’t say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or go into an elaborate description of the genetics of what he’s done; he’ll tell you a little story. Whatever it is, engage people. To get it your work on air it is your responsibility to be able to communicate it.

There is no set formula but you have to think about how you tell your granny the clever thing you’ve done at work today. You’d find a form of language that she would find amusing or exciting or interesting and that sums it up without getting bogged down in the technical detail.

Obviously you are running a risk - if you leave out the technical detail you are not telling the whole truth and you have to be careful not to mislead with your verbose florid language, particularly to exaggerate your claims in that way - but there are ways of doing it. The best communicators can find a way to get the point across and paint a mental picture without telling an untruth or over-egging their research.

Finally, what practical advice would you give to young scientists about to be interviewed for the radio?

TF: Sit down and think about what it is specifically that you want to say. Think about what it is that they are going to want and before you go on you’ll have a discussion as they’ll want to prime their presenter. In that conversation, in addition to telling them what you are going to say, you should find out as much about where the interviewer is coming from. That is your chance to find out whether there is a hidden agenda, whether they are trying to get you to say something that you don’t necessarily agree with. It is your chance to find out if they are going to come on and say “You say you are now able to cure cancer” or “We don’t need to take the MMR jab” etc.

You will go through it with the producer beforehand so find out where they are coming from and then sit down and think ‘How am I going to communicate that?’ Write down three key points that you are going to make or three examples that you are going to give and then let it go from there. It is a bit of a spontaneous and rolling thing, a live radio interview; go with the flow.


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    Last updated: October 05 2006
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