At 2pmET this afternoon, NASA held a news conference to announce a new discovery that it said would “impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
The news, it turns out, was that a type of bacteria was discovered that incorporates arsenic into its DNA in place of phosphorous. Until today it was thought that all living things, from humans to plants, could only incorporate phosphorous into their DNA.
In other words, the definition of “life” here on earth has effectively changed, and the probability of some form of life on another world becomes that much more likely.
Unfortunately, this discovery was not as important as the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” or the investigation into the murder of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen, at least according to MSNBC.
While Fox News and CNN carried the news conference live, and spoke to experts about the findings, MSNBC opted not to cut in.
Admittedly the subject matter is dense, and not easy for laypeople to understand. It is also hard for many non-experts to see the significance in the discovery of a single type of bacteria. Nonetheless, this is one of the most important biological discoveries in recent memory, and has a tremendous impact on the search for life on other planets or moons.
MSNBC did cover the story earlier in the day when the speculation was that NASA had discovered life on another celestial body, but for whatever reason decided the actual news was not important enough to cover live.
Science journalism is a tough nut to crack, which is why even Fox News and CNN made errors in judgment today. CNN had on Bill Nye “The Science Guy” as one of the experts to talk about the findings. While Nye is a great science popularizer, it is odd that he would get the call over an actual scientist or active science journalist, who likely would have been more well-versed on the subject.
Fox News actually covered the announcement thoroughly and fairly, even if it did cut out after only a few minutes. This morning however, FNC undermined whatever credibility it had by running a segment on a specious and long-debunked study that claims that WiFi creates “electrosmog” that makes people sick. It does not.
As Andrew Tyndall noted a few weeks ago, the cable news channels are increasingly becoming “politics channels,” with real news being put aside in favor of political fluff. When they do cover interesting news that is outside of their typical politics/business/crime cycle, it is often not covered well.