It's been the year of the fall of journalists. Week after week, month after month, the mighty keep unmasking their own:

• A prizewinning newspaper columnist loses her job after admitting to a multitude of fabrications. Another resigns under pressure after admitting that he plagiarized jokes.
• An up-and-coming magazine writer publishes articles in a respected national magazine, quoting sources who don't exist.
• A respected science writer suffers the slings and arrows of outraged colleagues after her page one story breathlessly "breaks" research news that had been calmly and quietly reported months earlier, news for which she submitted - and subsequently withdrew - a lucrative book proposal.
• TV reporters are fired, their anchor's wrist slapped, and a major newsmagazine recants the same, inadequately sourced expose.

As blame is placed and fault called, prime among these problems is a tendency of the overly enthusiastic or the overly ambitious to let their agenda rule their written words.

Words are powerful tools and can be deadly weapons. There are as many ways to express a thought as there are reasons for expressing it. The images that words leave in a reader's, listener's, or viewer's mind are the acid test of what is appropriate. What's the difference between "Researcher discovers cure for cancer" and "Researcher reports promising new cancer treatment?" What's the difference between a top and a tornado?

Spin.

A top spins elegantly, with grace and balance. A tornado spins violently, out of control, sucking up everything in its path and hurling battered fragments indiscriminately.

Journalists often wax eloquent about objectivity, about the purity of purpose of their calling. Public information officers (PIOs) respond by chanting the litany of science, the catechism of fact, and the whole and shining truths that spring from research.

True, and true - and yet both bring spin to what they do. They both still have agendas.

Everyone has an agenda. The sin comes in pretending that you don't.

The most "objective" reporter, in his or her heart of hearts, has a premise, a hypothesis, an agenda, if you will - if not before the story research starts, certainly by the typing of the last line. It shows in the lead, the nut-graph that tells readers, listeners, or viewers why they should care, why this story is a story. It can be seen in the sources quoted - and even more in the sources not quoted.

Striving for balance is an honorable and ethical journalistic pursuit, but a perfectly balanced story would have no punch. It would float softly and swiftly off the edge of the reader's horizon. A strong story, a memorable story, has a point of view, a reason for being - in other words, a spin. It's a goal good writers strive for - that elusive element called "voice."

The writers of news releases also have an agenda. Their agenda is clearer. It is the agenda of the people who sign their paychecks: "Get the name of our university/medical center/journal/
organization out there in the public eye." A PIO who cares about paying next month's rent or his kid's college tuition doesn't do, say, or write things that undermine that agenda.

But neither do they say or write things that they know are not true or that they can't support with facts, purely to advance the agenda. They don't, because: (1) it's wrong, and (2) it doesn't advance anything anyway. Ultimately, personal ethics may be the only absolute that any journalist or PIO can count on in this relativistic and fiercely competitive world.

Credibility is the gold standard to which science writers of all kinds ultimately must answer. They must assume a commitment to The Truth, whatever that may turn out to be, and work with their institution or media outlet to create an environment that values and fosters it. If that commitment is not there, embedded in the very heart and soul of the science writer's employer - be it university or newspaper, corporation or TV network - the only ethical thing left to do is to find another job.

If ethics - personal and institutional - are the best insurance against spin that misleads or misinforms, editors are the insurance agents. Good editing can play a vital role in the process of fostering truth in science writing. A skilled and dedicated editor brings a fresh and at best objective eye to the work. A good editor can apply a credibility standard that may escape the PIO in his or her eagerness to produce a blockbuster news release, or that might slip from sight as a reporter chases the page one story. As the Chicago Tribune's public editor George Langford said in a recent op-ed piece on the need for good editors: "Worthy editors are equal parts good shepherds and searing skeptics. They are the detectives who check the source, question the premise, demand the extra step, never lose sight of objectivity, and all the while lend support and encouragement. . . . They uphold the credibility standard against attacks of inexperience, economics, personal ambition, malicious agendas, newsroom politics, work overload, deadlines, and competition."

Like the media, universities have a special responsibility to be brokers of honest information. After all, their PIOs aren't selling soap. They're selling scientific discoveries, new knowledge. But their responsibility goes beyond honesty to openness. Science writers on both sides of the news release need to keep in mind the difference between "honest" and "open." If you ask me a question, and I answer it factually, I'm being honest. If I volunteer significant information without being asked, I'm being open.

In other words, if I say in a news release that commercial applications of a discovery are being developed, that's being honest. If I also say up front that the researcher holds the patent and is a shareholder in the company doing the development, that's being open.

There is nothing wrong with researchers using news releases to communicate their research to journalists, just as there is nothing wrong with journalists using those news releases as a reliable source for news. And they do. In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association devoted to the news media and peer-reviewed journals, Spanish researchers analyzed 1,060 newspaper articles on scientific research, published in seven major newspapers over a three-month period. Of the 142 that referred to research reported in four scientific journals - The Lancet, Nature, Science and the British Medical Journal - 84% referred to articles mentioned in news releases. (See HMS Beagle's Press Box, The Unusual Birth of "Science")

Once again, the sin is when the news release writers rely on half-truths, hype, and "breakthrough" language, or when the journalists use news releases indiscriminately or as their only source of science news. A good science writer can work for a university as well as for a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast outlet without compromising his or her ethics, and a quality news release can be a fine source of story ideas, alerting science journalists to research news they might otherwise miss in the torrent of journal articles that floods the marketplace.

Both science journalists and university publicists should drop the discourse about spin and focus instead on credibility and on open and honest disclosure. Then, once they're all playing by the same rules, they can spin to their heart's content.