 I think we are ready to begin. So hello and welcome everyone to today's EGU webinar which is called What the Media Wants to Hear from You. I'm Jillian D'Souza and I lead media relations at the European Geosciences Union. This webinar will run for about 45 minutes to an hour and will include time for questions at the end. I will now proceed to read a brief discussion or a description of today's talk. So in today's EGU webinar we will explore the kinds of science stories that journalists want to cover, the support and preparation that they need from scientists to tell a compelling story and how to have an effective two-way dialogue to share your science with the wider public. The webinar will also explore the many ways that a researcher might encounter a journalist either through their institution's press office or through someone reading a preprint or maybe while presenting or attending a conference. It will also offer tips on how to best prepare for these media interactions. We are joined today by our guest speaker Anonyo Bhattacharya. Welcome Anonyo. Hi, thank you. So Anonyo is a science writer based in London. During a 15-year career in journalism, he has worked at publications including Nature, The Economist and Chemistry World, covering everything from science policy and bibliometrics to genetics and particle physics. Before journalism, he was a medical researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego, California. He holds a degree in physics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in protein crystallography from Imperial College London. His first book, The Man from the Future, The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann, was published in 2021 and was a Financial Times and TLS book of the year. So very exciting a session ahead, clearly. But before we begin, I'd like to share with all of you just a little bit about why we're doing this webinar in the first place. This is one of EGU's many recent attempts to bridge the gap between scientists and journalists. If you're wondering what this gap is and why it exists, I would just like to briefly show you some background information for context. So I will now share my screen. So just about why this communication gap even exists and what it's about, studies have shown that many scientists perceive dealing with the media as a delicate task that can lead to improper quotations or misrepresentations of research results. And in a recently concluded media survey that was conducted and organized by EGU, we learned from journalists both in Europe and beyond that they have experienced during the interactions with scientists that scientists, even though they are eager and willing to talk to the media, they often do not follow through on media requests. The reasons could be varied. And scientists have often cited a lack of time. Other commitments, they do not consider themselves a subject matter expert, or they are unwilling or unable to discuss findings before they are published. Probably you might find yourself being familiar with some or all of these reasons. Now, one of the reasons why there's this gap is and also because of why there's so much of, you know, so many instances of misrepresentation or maybe quotes that have gone wrong is because of this increasing pressure on scientists to provide newsworthy or controversial or surprising stories. And there's also similar pressure on journalists to provide more scientific stories in a less or a short amount of time. So as a result, there are sometimes inaccuracies that occur in scientific reporting, although these are maybe far in between moderate and unintentional. They can be frequently found and even renowned media outlets. And, you know, there's a lot of published research on this as well. Now, sure, all of this might sound intimidating, but EGU would like to encourage you to still persist in your efforts to communicate with and to talk to the media. Why is this? At a 2020 panel discussion, which was held at Oregon State University, Claire Couch was a PhD student at the time, had some very interesting thoughts and insights to share about this. And Claire said that scientists need to be bilingual. That is, they need to be able to speak the language of science and of laypeople. What Claire said is that many researchers have incredibly important messages to share with the public, but often lack the skills and resources to make their communication efforts successful. But all scientists have a responsibility to make their science relevant, understandable and memorable for the public and for decision makers. So without further ado, I think a good place to start for all of us would be to understand what the media even wants to hear from us as scientists and how we can help them in this in this endeavor to collaborate better. So that's your cue Ananya to begin your talk. Feel free to share your slides and then of course we'll have a question and answer session towards the end. So over to you. Right. Thank you very much, Shilin. So this is all the problem. Thanks. And so yes, so my talk is going to be about what the media wants and doesn't want to hear from you scientists. So a little bit about me first. I'm on a note. Yeah, I did my undergraduate degree in physics and I have a PhD in biophysics, which if it means anything to anybody out there was in protein crystallography. And I even did a postdoc in medical research at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla. And for three years, I was wedded to research. And then we got an amicable divorce. I went on to do a master's in science communication at Imperial College. And I spent about 15 years in science journalism, working at various publications. But I suppose the ones that are most relevant to our audience is that I was news editor, and then chief online editor at Nature. And I was also a science correspondent at the Economist, which had a science section and still has a science section that many scientists admired. And indeed, I did too, when I was a PhD student. I finally left the Economist in January 2019 to write The Man from the Future, which was published in October 2021, and is available in all good bookshops, please buy it. And I'm, how did that get there? There we are. I am currently a self-employed writer. Now, I said the talk would be about begin with what the media don't want. And believe it or not, what they don't want is this, which is hype. Now, why do I say that? Well, back in 2011, I wrote an article for The Guardian that was entitled, scientists should not be allowed to copy check stories about their work. This didn't go down very well with scientists. My argument was that science journalism was, in essence, no different from any other area of journalism. Now, can you imagine asking a political reporter to share their story with a source? Right. Yes, Mr. Johnson. Of course, you can see what I'm going to write about the parties that you had in number 10. It just, it just wouldn't happen. So why would scientists expect to be treated any differently? And that's cool. So that was the first point. And then I explored the idea as to whether sharing a story is actually conducive to good journalism and whether stories that have been passed, you know, the scientists that actually who did the work, which we reported on, whether that actually made the story more readable or more accurate. So scientists thought that I was trolling them. And one of them, who was a neuroscientist called Chris Chambers, he responded with an article arguing that scientists should be allowed to check stories. And this kicked off quite dramatically and ended up leading to a debate at the Royal Institution. Now Chris's article, which was about twice as long as mine, I should, I should add, argued obviously that scientists should be able to check a journalist copy. And his argument was that that is because science is fundamentally different from other areas that journalists cover, like politics or sport. And his argument ran something like this. First peer review is special. Science has peer review, politicians don't get peer reviewed. And the whole process of peer review allows all mistakes and exaggerations to be spotted early on. Journalists aren't themselves qualified to spot those mistakes anyway. And it also acts as a sort of break on scientists so that they don't hype up their own results. His second point was the data in a paper and the paper itself, which is, after all, supposed to be the source material, that's open to scrutiny by anyone. And this should also work as a curb for any wild claims that a scientist might be tempted to make. They know that there's a research paper that anybody can access. And so therefore, that should keep them in line. And then lastly, he made the point that he didn't think scientists had anything to gain from press coverage. I mean, after all, we depend on citations and grants. And neither of those really depend on getting our story covered in the Daily Telegraph. So overall, what Chris argued was that scientists don't have any incentive to exaggerate or distort their own stories. So the inaccuracies that are in these stories must be down to journalists. Now these were, or at least they felt like extremely convincing reasons. The problem was that it turned out that they were not true. So Chris's article didn't go down well with journalists, just as my article didn't go down very well with scientists. But as he met more of us, he realized that actually maybe, just maybe journalists weren't the problem. Newspapers were understaffed and they still are. And reporters on some of the dailies, they were expected to write five or six stories a day. And they didn't have time to make stuff up. And so he thought, is there a bigger problem here that we need to address? What if journalists were in fact acting as mouthpieces for scientists already? Now, you know, how does that make sense? Well, he said, well, what if what journalists are actually doing is just churning out copy that's not based on the paper or even any conversation they might have with researchers, because often they just simply didn't have time to phone anybody up. But they were simply regurgitating what they read in the press release for the research. Could it be? Well, you know, could it be? He asked that the hype that got scientists in a tears was already in the press release. Now, he did something to his credit that any good scientist should should do. He went and got himself a big grant. And then he studied the problem. And he had a road to Damascus moment. And his research, which was published his first paper, which published almost a decade ago, confirmed exactly this, that in almost all cases or in the large majority of cases anyway, when news stories made claims beyond those that were made in the peer reviewed journal article, those exaggerations were nearly always present in the university press release. And the correlation was really very striking. And then in a later study, he found that the same pattern repeated itself in press releases that were issued by journals. And then one of those rare, rare things happened a couple of years afterwards, which is that there was an independent replication of Chris's results. Now, how did that happen? How did that happen? Well, a Dutch study had looked at science coverage in the Netherlands and it found the same thing. So now we're really building this strong case that Chris's suspicion that essentially science journalists were parroting university press releases and repeating the mistakes are in the rather than adding to mistakes. That was really firming up. Now, who was responsible for this hype that was appearing in these press releases? Well, what Chris found was that when scientists were not involved, they were exaggerated claims in about 60% of the press releases that were going out. And when scientists did get involved, I mean, that did drop, that went down to about 40%. Okay, 40% of press releases when scientists were on hand and worked with the press office. 40% still contained hype. But the remarkable thing is that when scientists wrote the press release, about 30% still contained hype. And he also, you know, so, you know, he also asked scientists, well, who do you blame for bad coverage of your of your work? And guess what? 100% of scientists blamed journalists for the coverage. They blame the newspaper. Now, you know, a third of scientists, you know, took some of the blame themselves. And as you can see, the university press office and the journal press office also are labeled as culpable. Now, a couple of years later, when Chris had done some more work on this, he produced a very long thread on Twitter. This is now back in 2018. So he really followed this up. And he came up with some advice for scientists. And I'm, I'm going to go through that because by and large, I agree with a lot of it. First, he says, if you insist on checking journalist copy before they publish, get used to never talking with the good ones. It makes you sound pedantic and untrusting. And you are only ensuring that your work is either never covered or is only covered by journals who lack confidence. Second, sometimes journalists check their copy or sections of it to be sure that they've got a particular fact correct. It happens to me, he says, maybe 5% of the time. And that's fine if it's their choice, but never impose that as a condition of engagement. Now, on his third point, he says, don't ask to check quotes. And here, Chris is actually much more hard line than most journalists, I think. I think it's fine to ask to check your, you know, if they're going to quote you in a piece, I think it's actually fine to ask a journalist to see those quotes before what we're talking about really here is asking to see the entire story that they've written about you when they're under immense, usually deadline pressure. He says, don't ask to check quotes. Instead, if you have prior concerns, tell them you are recording the interview at your end for your records. If they misquote you, tell them to correct it. Yeah, especially as a lot of news is online anyway. That's fair enough. If they won't publish the transcripts, tell their editor and never talk to them again. Well, if you have, you know, if you have the time to do that, then feel free, I think nowadays you probably get just as much joy by just emailing the journalists you spoke to, and correcting the record yourself on Twitter or something like that. But, yeah, I mean, tread carefully, but be firm. I think it's actually pretty rare for most of the reputable newspapers and magazines to misquote people anyway. I don't think that's a huge problem. Fourth, Chris says, if you really want accurate science news, avoid exaggeration in your own press releases and anticipate likely misunderstandings by including a section. What this study does not show. If you allow hype in your PR, then you share culpability for misreporting. And finally, he says, accept that you're not special to journalism and neither is science. Independence is key to journalism. Sometimes journalists will screw up and sometimes you will do it all by yourself. Get media trained, find the good journals and trust them and basically get over yourself. Yes, all good advice, good advice for everybody. Now, what to do if you encounter a journalist in the wild? Well, if you think your research might get press attention, then talk to your press office nice and early and get any training that they offer beforehand. Be confident, you know, you know your research best. You certainly know it better than any of us. So just try and make sure that you can explain the work clearly to a dunce and practice with a dunce. That is with a friend who can ask stupid questions because that's what journalists do for a living. We ask stupid questions, you answer them and then we write our stories. The next point seems kind of obvious, right? It says don't say anything that isn't true. But what I mean by that is I've run into this has caused me more grief than almost anything else with sources who do not have, say, a number, a stat to hand. And so they say something fairly confidently. And you go away, you might quote them. And then it turns out that they got it wrong. So instead of just saying, actually, I don't know that, but I'll email you with it, which is perfectly acceptable as long as you do then email them with it, or text them with it. You know, they just, they just say, oh, it was about this. And then that turns out not to be true. And that can introduce errors, because many of the dailies, most of them do not have fact checkers on hand. They don't have time to fact check who will take a look at your paper, go through it and compare that to, to what you said or to what another scientist said. Now, you know, I know for a fact, the economist does have brilliant fact checking. And so does nature. So does nature. And I don't know too much about sciences processes, but there are a few places that run a very detailed fact checking operation. But the thing is, you know, the economist is a weekly. And, you know, if nature can't have a good fact checking unit, then who can, right? So don't say anything that isn't true. Have a couple of pithy quotes ready. Not too cheesy. And now I have encountered researchers who have clearly been drilled in this element to, to have their quotes ready. And then they repeat them ad infinitum during the interview. And it sounds very wooden. And the quotes aren't that great. Anyway, so what do I mean by pithy? Well, something that kind of summarizes what you think are kind of the take home messages of the research in some nice quotable way. And the rest of the time, you'll probably end up just running through your, you know, your results and methodology anyway, which that will come pretty easily. Now, it is okay to talk to a journalist about a preprint. But just when, if this does happen, and if you are approached by a journalist, you know, somebody phones you up or emails you saying, saw that paper on archive, and I'd like to chat to you about it, I'd like to do a story on it. And just, you know, mention that, you know, the work hasn't been peer reviewed. And that is an essential caveat for them to include. Now, if they have taken the step of searching through archive, looking for stories on their patch anyway, they probably are aware of this, but it's, you know, it can't do any harm to remind them of that. You won't get into any trouble for that. And if they're if they're a journalist from a reputable newspaper or a magazine like Nature, what we tend to do is we go out and find a kind of independent scientific sources, ask them to read the paper, and see what they think. And I have been told by several scientists that when we do that, and when we get back to them with questions, it's like, it's kind of like a mini peer review process. So good science journalism can feel a bit like you're going through peer review early. Sorry. Conference presentation, a conference presentation is fair game. If you are at a conference, you present some exciting work, and then a journalist approaches you afterwards. This is okay. They are doing their job. If you think this might happen, contact the conference organizers beforehand and say, are they going to be journalists about? And if so, have that chat with that press office and be prepared. Now, bear in mind that if you just walk off in a half or say, oh, I don't want those results reported, the likelihood is that they will report them anyway, because you've given a presentation, right? So they can write that up and they will write that up without your participation, which will not necessarily be good for the story. And you will, you know, miss out on your or, you know, they will, they will drop the story and then you will miss out on your work being covered. So bear that in mind. Now, there is a big, big caveat and which is do not promote unpeer reviewed preprint or unpeer reviewed work to the press yourself, right? Don't push your press office to do so. And this is because of something known as the ingle finger rule, which you may have heard of. And essentially, what this says is that if a journal feels that you have published your work in some way, and that could include a newspaper review, you know, you pushed for some sort of coverage of that work, then they may decline to accept it. And this has happened. This happened whilst I was at nature where back up editors said, well, you know, you issued this press release about the work and then you talk to the BBC and so on. So we're not going to take that work anymore. Okay. So don't do that. It would be a shame to miss out on an age of pay, wouldn't it? Or because, because, you know, you sent out a press release and stay calm. Just bear in mind that if a journalist has time to go to a conference and report on it, then they're probably one of the better ones, because frankly, many of the ones at dailies just don't do that. Okay. Right. Well, thank you very much for listening. And thank you so much, Ananya. That was really helpful. I'm sure our participants agreed. And now we can officially open the floor for any questions that our attendees have. So feel free to either type them in the chat. And then I can address them one by one. But maybe until some of the questions come, I had a question, Ananya. That's okay. So over the years, I've spoken to a lot of scientists as well. And many of them have expressed to me or confided in me that they believe that their research isn't really relevant enough, or their findings are not significant enough to share with the media. And interestingly, some have even said this to me after journalists have approached them for comments or interviews. So certainly there is interest. But then maybe they feel that if they comment, maybe their colleagues might have something to say about it, or there's something that's still holding them back. So what advice do you have for scientists to just sort of keep an open mind about this? Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? And there is a, I can't not seeing the wood for the trees, I think, thing going on there. And of course, you know, as researchers, researchers live in fear of the condemnation and judgment of their peers. And it is, of course, extremely important in science. Nobody's saying it's not. What I would say is that when you produce a piece of work, you're not necessarily the best qualified to say how interesting it is. I mean, I get the other side quite a bit, which is that, you know, researchers absolutely are absolutely convinced that their latest paper is of massive public interest. But then there's a prize when journalists are remotely interested in in covering it. So I think, you know, often, researchers are a bad judge. And, you know, it that this is partly what the press office is there for, you know, you go to the press office, you go, Okay, I've been approached to talk about this. But I just don't think it's newsworthy. And, you know, and talk it through with them. I think it seems what what is likely here is that they're possibly afraid that their findings will be exaggerated, perhaps, in which case, the answer is probably just to kind of kind of down things, you know, just when you talk to the journalist, do talk to the journalist and then, you know, just stick to what you think are the main points. And then, you know, if they don't then after that, they don't think it's, you know, it's a story, they're not interested in producing a story that won't be read. I mean, one thing that journalists are quite good at is finding stories that are of interest to their readership. So, and something that might be of huge interest to say, readers of nature, well, you know, might not be of any interest at all to readers of, I don't know, the daily mail or the Guardian or the telegraph, and so on. The other thing is, you know, bear in mind that if a journalist is really interested in a piece of work that you've produced that's been published or is otherwise in the public domain, then they can just go ahead and cover that. And I, you know, I've done that once or twice because the researchers just said, I'm not going to talk to you about this, in which case, you go off, you read the paper, you send the paper to other people in the field who you say, would you mind reading this and talking to me about it? And then you write that story without the contribution of the person who produced the work. Now, and which is which is less than ideal. But, you know, you know, that if a piece of work is sufficiently interesting, and you found it, then it's quite likely that another journalist, maybe one that isn't as good as you, will also find it and make a, make a worse job of reporting it. So, if you want to... I'm sorry to cut you off, but I mean, every journalist has a different way of being inspired or maybe looks for different books from the same research. So, you never know what might actually be someone's interest. So, to that end, it's just important to just try to be available and try to be accessible to journalists because they might have a story that maybe you did not see coming at all from your book. Yeah, quite. And it could be that your research is sort of part of a bigger puzzle. It might be part of a feature, for example, or something like that. So, you know, try not to, you know, to pre-judge. I mean, I would say obviously there are some newspapers, you know, if you hear from one of our name names and if you hear from them, then you're probably right to be cautious. But everybody knows which ones they are. So, you know, again, take advice from the press office and decide. But just bear in mind that, you know, if you don't talk in these situations, then, you know, they've got the press release and the story will be based on the press release. If, you know, if that's the case, which, you know, you may decide that's all you want out there. You don't want to engage any further. I think sometimes it can kind of really lift a story if the scientist is involved. But sometimes, you know, it's possible that, you know, for a couple of newspapers that their agenda may override, you know, your caution. So, but we, you know, we know who they are. And, you know, so decide on a case-by-case basis. And if you build up a good relationship with a journalist, you know, that's always good. If you are repeatedly producing work that is of public interest, if you're in an area, an exciting area, then, you know, that's, that, that can work very well for both of you. And the important thing is to just start with building those relationships really and hopefully take it from there. It's a lifelong process really. We have another question that's come in. What key advice would you give a press officer to help scientists feel more comfortable talking about their work? I have never worked as a press officer. So that's an interesting question. I think actually perhaps one thing is, you know, the kind of the, you know, behave like a journalist. And so I'll ask the stupid questions. And, you know, once they've run through that and once a scientist has sort of explained their research a couple of times, I think, you know, people will tend to relax. You know, they might have a few notes in front of them or whatever, some talking points, you know, those, those pithy quotes. If a press officer is able to do that, then I think that will diffuse a lot of the, a lot of the nerves. And of course, do you work with the scientist when you are preparing that press release? That, you know, scientists, some scientists can't necessarily, you know, they won't necessarily be able to write for lay people. They, you know, they may not see the most exciting or interesting part of their research from a, you know, from the point of view of the general public, if you like, they might be, they might have latched on to what they think is important as a scientist, but they might not see, you know, but other than that. And clearly it's the press officer's job to, to kind of bring that out and do, do, do the hand holding and make sure that, you know, that they don't get overexcited and start generating their own results as well, which apparently has been known to happen. I hope that's, was that helpful? I sure hope so. And that's actually a good segue into our next question, which is coming in from Yasmin, who asks, how would you communicate existing uncertainty in climate science or indeed any other scientific field to a journalist in a way that this uncertainty is propagated to the general public without rendering the entire story unimportant? Wow. Yeah, that's, that's a very big question. I mean, I personally have edited climate science, but I haven't covered very much of it myself. But I think in some ways, the problems are not so different with areas of medical research, for example, where, you know, you will have a finding in say rats. And it's, it's reported as if, you know, tomorrow there's going to be some treatment for humans off the basis of this work. It's about kind of bringing in the caveats, I guess, without totally ruining the story. I mean, if you have to put so many caveats into the work that actually it's so tenuous that you can barely say anything that is of wider interest without 100 caveats, then you have to wonder, is that work ready to be shared more widely? But if, you know, what you mean is, you know, these are projections of likely, but not certain outcomes, then I think you say something along those lines, you give, well, how likely do we think, you know, this is this, this will come about, and you give some indication of that, which is, I know, difficult, but I think that's really what you've got to do. You've got to come up with some way of communicating that uncertainty by. Is there, is there, you know, it's more likely than not or whatever of, yeah, of saying that, or point, you know, to, if you can, to how past predictions have fared and say, well, you know, this is, this is what was said, and this is what happened, and there are, you know, that's, that as a layperson myself in this area, that that would be interesting to me. Yeah, and distinguish what is truly an absolute, you know, strong consensus in the field from, you know, the, what are more tenuous findings, and, you know, and, and distinguish between them as, as, as you're talking. And again, you know, the day, you know, the times will probably, the times reporter will probably pick up on that, and there are, there are some, there are some that won't. And so, you know, as Chris said, that section in your press release, which says this is not saying this, I think that could be very handy for a contentious area like climate science, for example, and you can always say, you know, why did you say that in the story? It clearly said, this isn't what the research showed for sure. You know, in that press release, if you can work in, you know, there's a x percent chance or whatever this is true, you know, or, or do put your comparisons there, then the journalist has it right in front of them. And your chances of actually getting those caveats into the story are much higher than if you count on them, that talking to you, which they may or may not do. But, you know, if they have that right there on the press release, then there's no excuse, right? No matter what deadline pressure they're under, you've already put those uncertainties, if you like, and express them in a palatable way for them to then stick in their new story. Thank you. Before we proceed to the next question, maybe Ananya, if you could stop sharing your screen so that we have a chance to see you in full screen, that would be really interesting. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, there we are. Okay, great. So our next question is from Mateo, who says, is there any point approaching specific journalists once the press release is out, assuming the release has been ignored? Oh, is there any? Well, as a journalist, I'd probably say no, because there's nothing more annoying than, you know, you've had your news meeting, stories have been mulled over and talked about with the team and the editor, and you're off writing, and then you're approached by a scientist who says, oh, my papers come out, and you haven't covered it. You know, why haven't you done it? But, you know, there are a lot of press releases that go out. And if your paper isn't appearing in one of the really big journals in your field, you know, or, you know, like Nature or Science or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, all of these journals that have very organized press release routine. So, so for example, Nature, for example, will release a early embargoed press releases of all of the papers that they identify as being newsworthy, and they do a brilliant job. Journalists will get those early several days early, and often they will have the meeting a couple of days earlier. It's one of the things that make science journalists lazy is the embargoed press release, because you do get that from time to time in other areas, in, you know, whatever, in political reporting, you might get a report under embargo from a committee or something like that. But in science this happens a lot, because, you know, the journals are very dominant on that. Now, if your paper isn't in one of the big journals with a very organized press office, which journalists check as a matter of routine, and if it's just gone out as a press release from just your university, then sure, it might be, and you're convinced that this is a big story, then sure, it is worthwhile sending out a couple of emails. What journalists really like, I should say, is an exclusive. So if you have some sort of, if you have a favorite journalist, or if you have a couple of people that you've worked with before, then I would say kind of send it to them, write a, you know, a very brief summary of why you think it's newsworthy, and say, as far as I know, this research hasn't been picked up yet. And, you know, if you're right, and if, you know, you've just been overlooked, you know, you've been lost in the news chair, then, you know, you might get lucky. And the journalist might go, aha, well, you know, this is, this will be a bit of an exclusive for me. So I might, I might go for it. And that's happened to me as well. So it's, you know, I can't, I can't say that definitely shouldn't do it. But the chance, if, if your paper is coming out or has come out in one of the big journals, the chances are that somebody will have looked at that, and, and discussed whether to, whether to cover it. Now, if, again, if, like, if it's a nature paper that's just coming out, and the nature press officers decided that it's not newsworthy, then they, and you think, well, that's just, that's outrageous. I really think it is. Again, it might be worth doing it. Now, the thing not to do is break the journal embargo. You can contact a journalist, but don't share the paper with them and explain to them that the paper is under embargo. And, you know, they can't bring out the paper before. Now, the thing is, this is a, you know, this is a very, it's a, it's very sort of grey area because by telling them about the research before the embargo lifts, you're also sort of breaking the embargo. If they then go ahead and publish their story before the embargo lifts, you know, then, then they're, then you're, you're both kind of in trouble. But most journalists, most science journalists, specialist science journalists are all signed up to the embargo, so they will not do that. The other thing not to do is if it's been weeks, your papers come out weeks ago, then, you know, the opportunity is probably passed. So if you're going to approach a journalist, then, you know, send that email, you know, on the day that the paper's coming out. If you, if you think it's, if it's been missed, or as close to it as possible. And we have just one more question, I believe. And to some degree, you've already answered some of this. What are some things that scientists should avoid saying or doing when talking to a journalist? Well, this is a tricky one. But don't get lost in the weeds. Don't go into technical, deep into technical details that won't appear. But if, if you feel that the journalist has sort of misunderstood some vital aspects of the paper, and it really is important, then of course, you know, you should say, actually, that's not quite right. Let me do that. But don't get lost in the weeds. Don't expect, you know, this to, you know, the journal article is already the thing of record, right? That's the thing, the records of your research. And you can't expect a news article to produce every kind of key point on that. It's going to, it's going to, it's a big picture thing. It's going to say, this is what it's about. This is roughly what, you know, if you're lucky, they'll say, this is roughly what they, this is what they do. And isn't it cool? And here's, here's what other scientists thought of it. And that's, that's how it's going to go. So, so there's, there's that. Respond in a timely way. That's important. If they've got more questions and the email your questions, do try and don't, don't disappear off into meetings or super visions for the rest of the day. And if you are, then just check about phone from time to time, in case there's a panic stricken question on the day. And that's, you know, the turnaround will usually be within about 24 hours. So it's only the weekly magazines that are going to have more time than that. And even then they don't necessarily have that much more time. But if your paper is coming out like later that day or in the afternoon, you pretty much have to be available throughout that time. So no matter where you are, don't ignore your phone or, you know, don't, don't do that. Because that can, that short window can lead to more errors than anything else. Because if the journalist doesn't know the answer to something, you know, they're either going to pull the story, the editors are going to pull the story, or they're going to just run with what they think is the right answer. So that's really important. So be available in that time. And again, your press office, I'm sure will impress the importance of that on you. And yeah, and don't, you know, as I said, don't, don't exaggerate the claims. You don't have the confidence of your work, but no more. Yeah, so stay away from, you know, too, too, too many unnecessary technical details that, you know, don't confuse the board journalist. Be available. So those sorts of things, I think. Probably the most important. We've run, we've run through so many of the down don't say, you know, I demand to see the story before you publish it. That is not going to be a good approach because you'll instantly sour them. And that, that's probably not a good outcome for either of you. But yeah, I mean, I think the best stories tend to get, you know, written when the researchers are pretty enthusiastic about their work. And, you know, reasonably happy to engage and, you know, the press release has kind of your rules of engagement as it were. It was the, you know, this, this isn't what it's saying. This is what it's saying. And if you stick to that, then it's fine. Do, you know, just, you know, do try and make sure you don't say anything. Because, you know, you want to be quoted, you know, determined to be quotable. And then you say something that you regret, and then you're going to try and contact the journalist when they've written the story and go, no, no, no, I said that, but I didn't mean it. Try, you know, try not to, try not to veer off, veer off course. Because, you know, the better ones will kind of go, hmm, are you sure you, are you sure you really meant that, you know, but, but some who are in a hurry will just go, okay, right, fine, write it down. The stories filed in 20 minutes, and then they're on to the next one. So, yeah. Okay, thank you. So it doesn't look like we have any more questions. And we've got a whole lot of important takeaways from you when you're talking on your, if you would like to leave us with any last few words or a take home message. Otherwise, we are ready to conclude our webinar for today. Okay, no, just thank you very much for having me. It was fun. I hope, I hope everybody learned something and also found it fun as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. My only takeaway message to everyone is if you don't know who your press officer is or who's in charge of your institution's media relations, maybe that is a good place to start now. Because that could really get the ball rolling for any sort of media communication that you want to do in the future. So all the best to everyone. And we are now ready to conclude our webinar. So thank you, everyone, again, and I wish you a good day ahead.