Media Watch caught out by its fossil morality tale

Peter McAllister
From: The Australian
April 26, 2010

MEDIA Watch has done what any entertainment outlet, National Geographic included, does: craft an appealing narrative.

The timing is exquisite. Just six weeks after being spit-roasted on Media Watch, controversial anthropologist Lee Berger, has set the study of human evolution aback with the discovery of a possibly game-changing human fossil. The find has forced a grudging acceptance from his surprised critics. Despite his allegedly charlatan ways, the huckster apparently has his scientific uses.

In reality nobody should be surprised. Carnival showman types have been rewriting archeology since Indiana Jones was in leather shorts.

In the 19th century Heinrich Schliemann, war-profiteer and all-round charlatan, wrong-footed historians by proving Homer's mythical city of Troy so real he was able to haul away cartloads of its treasure. He even publicised his find by draping his wife in the Trojan "jewels of Helen". The Great Belzoni, the giant Italian Egyptologist who opened the second pyramid at Giza, went one better, funding his digs with public strongman performances such as lifting 12 men at a time.

Berger has not accumulated a Trojan treasure but he has amassed $6 million in private research support. He has likewise shown a Belzoni-like talent for publicity, lining up National Geographic funding and documentaries for his various projects.

But this is no cause for celebration, it seems. In fact, it is the apparent misdeed that got him on Media Watch. According to the ABC's watchdog, Berger's mixing of entertainment and science has led to a serious perversion of the latter by the former.

How valid is Media Watch's criticism? Leaving aside its tone of latent xenophobia "some [foreign documentaries] simply don't deserve to be gobbling up precious prime time on the national broadcaster" the program's main claim is that science stories are inevitably corrupted whenever a (foreign) media organisation mixes in at the research stage. Those damned Yank television companies can't be trusted to craft a straight story with our pure science, it seems.

The supreme irony, of course, is that Media Watch has fitted itself up nicely for the same charge. J'accuse, Jonathan Holmes.

Reviewing the National Geographic documentary on Berger's research into a possible fossil prehistoric pygmy population in the Micronesian nation of Palau, Mystery Skulls of Palau, Media Watch crafted a classic morality tale of villains and virgins, muddying the science dreadfully themselves in the process.

To give one example of the errors Media Watch lands itself in by taking sides in a science spat, Holmes quotes archeologist Scott Fitzpatrick as "proving" Berger's pygmy fossils are actually well within the range of modern populations. Indeed, they are the range of modern human pygmy populations, that is.

Holmes, of course, was able to find authors to rubbish Berger's work. Fitzpatrick, for one, describes Mystery Skulls of Palau as a pseudo-documentary. Yet these vitriolic claims are simply an unfortunate stock-in-trade of much scientific debate these days. Finding one academic to call another's work totally discredited is like shooting fish in a barrel. Numerous scientists have described the Homo floresiensis "hobbit" as discredited too, but that doesn't make that brilliant discovery any less remarkable.

What Media Watch has really done is what any self-respecting entertainment outlet, National Geographic included, does: craft an appealing narrative. Theirs simply features different heroes (Fitzpatrick) and different villains (Berger). The point is there is no valid reason, beyond the needs of a good story, for elevating one above the other. Berger's work is just as legitimate as Fitzpatrick's, and Media Watch is in no position to choose between the two on anything other than the grounds of prejudice.

Do Berger and National Geographic really deserve their roles in Media Watch's morality tale? I don't think so. What, for example, is the end result of their dastardly efforts? One, some interesting research on Palauan fossils was done that wouldn't have been otherwise. Two, a lay audience now knows a little more about themselves and the world they live in. And three, a few thousand males aged 16-35 (the main documentary demographic, if National Geographic's research is to be believed) were entertained for an hour or so late on a Tuesday night, instead of being out committing crimes (another favoured activity of that demographic, apparently).

True, Media Watch is on safer ground criticising sensationalism in modern science entertainment. With every researcher hyping their find to the skies there is a danger the viewing public will suffer revelation fatigue. After all, the past few years have seen a succession of supposed "missing links", of which Berger's African find is only the latest. Yet this, too, is simply what has to be done to craft an entertaining yarn for a wide audience.

Holmes chided Berger for "knowing a good story when he sees it". He does, thank god. And thank god too, for the sake of science, that he tries to tell it.

Peter McAllister is a Perth based lecturer in science communication. His book, Manthropology, is under development as an SBS-National Geographic co-production.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/media-watch-caught-out-by-its-fossil-morality-tale/story-e6frg9bo-1225858121977