What a Nobel Prize winner says about media funding in Austria
Science journalists criticize the amendment to media funding. And the quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger is also amazed.
The club of education and science journalists criticizes the draft amendment to media funding. The current version excludes reports on science as a “universal criterion”. This not only runs counter to the intended reduction in hostility to science, but according to constitutional law Heinz Maier also contrary to equality.
The non-consideration of the area of science for funding is “irrelevant”, so Mayer said in the letter “considerable constitutional concerns” about this approach, the club quoted him on Tuesday in a broadcast. There are fears of a further thinning out of science journalism, which is already struggling with relatively small editorial teams. The initiative of the Club of Female Education and Science Journalists is supported by numerous science organizations in the state, including the Austrian Academy of Sciences or FWFsupports.
Anchor science in people’s minds
Also the Viennese quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, who received this year’s Physics Nobel Prize on Saturday, was “quite surprised that science journalism is not being promoted appropriately, especially in the current situation”. It is regrettable how much this has been reduced in the individual editorial offices and media in recent years. In the future, Austria can only build on the minds of young people and the best education.
“I would very much wish that more people from Austria would receive the Nobel Prize in the future. To do this, you have to anchor science in people’s minds very early on as something completely normal, everyday and not as something special that only interests a few exotic people,” says Zeilinger, “or to put it very badly: If you want it to take a long time in Austria, that there is another Nobel Prize, then you put as little as possible into science journalism.”
(APA)