There are subtle similarities in the ways good scientists and good journalists work. Conducting scientific research and researching news stories, reporting results in academic journals, and publishing stories in the popular media share little in terms of experimentation and style but more than most people think in terms of motivation. Personal ambition is common in both occupations, but even hypertrophied egos cannot always crowd out curiosity or the drive to uncover a new fact or the "truth." Bias occurs in both fields, but so do sincere attempts to disprove favored beliefs and suspicions before announcing results. Fraud follows remarkably similar courses in plagiarized or fabricated science papers and newspaper articles. Getting past the scrutiny of either peer reviewers or editors requires some degree of quality and accommodation. Both groups build stories. Among the best workers in both fields, those stories hold.

A striking difference between the two professions becomes apparent when critics speak and results are challenged. Scientists can despise competitors with an intensity not found on battlefields, but the battles, however nasty, start with discussions of data and eventually end with them. Questioning of data is routine and expected, if often unwelcome, in science.

Questions for reporters are unwelcome and not routine enough. Questioning is frequently met with defensiveness and indignation that no amount of data can overcome. Long used to being the ones asking the questions, journalists are too often offended upon receiving them. Whether it is Dan Rather telling a reporter investigating him to "[expletive deleted] off" or members of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) expressing unease about having their publicly posted listserv comments quoted, many journalists develop a very suspicious and unfriendly outlook when they become the story. They know better than anyone else that the power lies with the person asking the questions.

The criticism of the NASW writers appeared last June in two articles by Joe Nicholson in the news industry trade journal Editor & Publisher (E & P), entitled Is Science Writers Group Trying to Muzzle Press? and What NASW Wants Unreported from Its Web Site. The first piece correctly pointed out that many NASW members were severely critical of the New York Times and science reporter Gina Kolata for an ill-advised front-page article about a cancer cure. The second piece discussed the objections by several science writers to having their publicly posted comments quoted.

Unfortunately, there were serious errors in the E & P stories, errors that undermined the legitimate point of the articles. NASW president Richard Harris corrected the errors in a letter to the editor, "NASW Denies Muzzling Press." (The articles, incidentally, were free at the time of this writing. The letter to the editor costs $2 to read online.) What Nicholson did get right, however, was the tone of many NASW members both in their criticism of Kolata and in their unease with the prospect of being quoted.

"The most frustrating thing I have to deal with, and most of us who care about elevating standards have to deal with, is the defensiveness of journalists when they are called out," said Bill Kovach, curator of the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Kovach is a former executive editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and former chief of the Washington, D.C. bureau of the New York Times.

James Poniewozik alludes to a similar unease in his column for the Web magazine Salon, Return of the Journalist Supervillains: Hypocritcal Newsrooms Across the Lands Give Thanks for Gina Kolata and Stephen Glass.

"Its attack-dog image notwithstanding," Poniewozik writes, "when it comes to confronting its own, journalism is a profession of repression: sotto voce sniping, teeth-gritting accommodations of colleagues who could someday screw you. That might explain the sanctimonious gusto with which journalists heap scorn on compeers caught doing something undeniably wrong. Annihilating a safe target like Janet Cooke seems positively cathartic."

Poniewozik's insights are impressive. When the New Republic learned that reporter Stephen Glass was practicing creative fiction writing rather than journalism, he was forced to look for new work and the press had a story. The Washington Post had a similar experience with Cooke, and the Boston Globe has offered up columnists Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle recently for committing similar sins. Gina Kolata's misinterpretation of the significance of some basic cancer research, CNN/Time's exclusive on the mythic use of nerve gas by the US military during the Vietnam War, and many other media misdeeds were all subjected, appropriately, to coverage and analysis by the press. But these are the obvious stories. Other stories that in the long term are just as significant - the everyday press-monitoring stories - are rare. Just as it routinely covers government, finance, medicine, science, education, lifestyles, crime, and entertainment, the press should treat itself as a daily beat. It does so only intermittently and only for the "safe" targets that are so blatantly in error that the press could not reasonably fail to investigate and report.

Protection of the First Amendment is an obvious reason offered for the unease many in the press feels when they become the subject of a story. In cases of legitimate press criticism, of course, this is unconvincing. The press and other media, as influential institutions, should be as closely scrutinized as, say, the sexual practices of the President of the United States.

"I think there is far too little self-analysis or analysis of competitors," Kovach told HMS Beagle. "If you purport to provide your readers with your best effort at [reaching] the truth, then you've got an obligation to let them know when you fail, an obligation to let them know when you didn't measure up to your own standards, because the only thing you offer a reader or viewer or listener is your credibility."

Daryl Lease, an editor for the Web guide Suite101.com, wrote a short piece about Kovach's new role as ombudsman for Brill's Content, a new magazine that covers the media. In A New Watchdog for the Watchdogs Lease asks, "Don't journalists already spend too much time gazing at their navels when they ought to be committing journalism?"

The answer is no, they don't spend too much time criticizing themselves. The problem is that they publish their criticisms where few in the public see them. The day-to-day-analysis, watch-dog-type coverage of the media is largely limited to a handful of excellent and interesting trade publications and a few self-appointed press monitoring groups. Many of the articles in these publications should be rewritten as news for daily consumers. Such articles can be found in periodicals such as the Neiman Reports: The Journal for Serious Journalists, produced by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This publication was established in 1947 "in response to a national commission which deplored the state of journalism in The United States." Its current issue is entitled Watchdog, Attack Dog, or Lap Dog? Aggressive Reporting and How to Revive It, and includes an article called Editors Without Backbone.

The Columbia Journalism Review offers articles with titles such as How Low Can TV News Go? and Where We Went Wrong.

In Money Lust: How Pressure for Profits Is Perverting Journalism, Neil Hickey quotes Time's former managing editor Ray Cave on the subject of profit pressure pushing down journalistic standards: "It's the biggest story in American journalism." Hickey adds "Regrettably, it's also the least reported story in American journalism." Regrettably, it is only one of many underreported stories in American journalism.

Unfortunately, neither the Columbia Journalism Review, The American Journalism Review (another useful source of criticism), nor any of the other trade journals are to be found on the coffee tables of many non-journalists.

Brill's Content, a new monthly magazine about journalism, is trying to get onto those tables. Not surprisingly, it has not been warmly welcomed by the press. Last June, a panel on NBC's Meet the Press questioned the magazine's founder Steven Brill with what appeared to many viewers to be more antagonism than it metes out to other guests. Critics point out that because Brill supports President Clinton, his magazine is tainted. Nevertheless, if it survives, it could be the first mainstream press watchdog.

Kovach believes in the role of ombudspersons in the press. He sees them as serving a valuable role in journalism. They cannot, however, change the press's view of its obligation to cover itself: consumers themselves must demand that. Based on the cynical view the reading public appears to have of the press's integrity, chances are that the demand - if it ever comes - will come from the next generation.

Kovach is working with a group at Harvard to develop a model curriculum for grade school teachers that goes beyond typical "media literacy" programs. These programs may succeed in warning children about the influence of advertising. "But by approaching the teaching that way, you just make young people cynical," Kovach said.

The new program aims to get children to ask themselves "What do I need from the newspaper or news show in order to make a decision about what I am researching?"

"They can begin to think critically about the news that they get so they can begin to put pressure on the news organizations to give them better information," Kovach said. The goal is to raise a generation of young people who will become a force that will demand better information.

If the program is successful, that generation may be the first to see the press routinely covering topics it now neglects, including its own day-to-day performance. And that view stems from both cynicism and hope.