If I was an author for the NY Times and was tasked with writing an article on primary scientific literature, I would need to include several things in order to appeal to a general audience while staying in line with the primary literature.  To begin, I definitely would need to refrain from making any conclusion that wasn’t made in the original study. I would need to be able to include quotes from the study itself or even reach out to the researchers in order to get their own take.  Doing this would ensure the legitimacy of my own article while also using my platform as a popular media reporter to educate the general population.

A good representation of scientific research in a popular media report requires including all aspects of the study itself.  Something I noticed with a majority of the articles (including mine) was that certain parts of the study were left out in order to center the popular article around a specific point (e.g. in my article, the fact that the airport security trays that were tested had more viruses than the toilet seats was pretty much the crux of the article). I think this is something that could be improved on when journalists write about science.  Something in my own and my classmates’ research my that really struck me as interesting was the fact that the bigger the claim made in the title of the popular article usually correlated with a less reliable article. I think that journalists in the Information Age often times need to get those views on their article to stay relevant and including a bold claim in the title of the article they write is a way of achieving a higher click ratio.