Peter Calamai

Biography:
Peter Calamai is a freelance newspaper and magazine writer and an adjunct research professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. Calamai worked for 30 years as a reporter and editor with the now-defunct Southam newspapers. A 1965 B.Sc. physics graduate from McMaster University, he was the national science reporter for Southam News from 1973 to 1977 and filled a similar post for The Toronto Star from 1998 to 2008, both times based in Ottawa. A founder of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association, Calamai is also a director of the Science Media Centre of Canada. He has been honoured for science journalism by the Canadian Association of Physicists, the Royal Canadian Institute, the Geological Association of Canada and the American Meteorological Society. As well Calamai is a three-time winner of National Newspaper Awards for spot news reporting and feature writing.

Abstract:
Decline and Fall: The sorry state of science policy reportage in Canada
It is now commonplace to bemoan the disappearance from the mass media in Canada of journalists who specialize in reporting about science, leaving either a vacuum or ill-equipped general-assignment reporters to try to fill the gap. Despite claims of a New Jerusalem by its proponents, the Internet is largely providing a plethora of sites engaged in special pleading, advocacy and propaganda concerning frontier research issues.
Overlooked in this hand-wringing is an absence at least as troubling to the ideal of informed public debate. Reporting and commentary on matters of science policy is rare in the mass media and sporadic even in publications specializing in public policy. Yet in the 1970s, Science Forum journal provided not only insightful commentary on science policy issues but first-hand investigative reporting. This presentation by an Ottawa correspondent for Science Forum will examine the reasons for this decline and fall.