Jim Handman

CanWest Global Fellow in Media
January 1 2014 - June 30, 2014

Jim HandmanJim Handman has been the Executive Producer of the CBC Radio science program, Quirks & Quarks, for the past 15 years. During that time, he has won numerous prizes and honours for science journalism, including the Walter Sullivan Award from the AGU; the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics; as well as many awards from the Canadian Science Writers Association.

Jim has also taught broadcast journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, conducted workshops for the Graduate Science Communications program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, and taught radio at the National University of Rwanda.  He was also a Science-Writer-in-Residence at the journalism school of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  In 2014, he was the CanWest-Global Fellow in Journalism at Western University.

Before joining Quirks & Quarks, Jim was a senior journalist and producer with CBC Radio News, serving as Foreign Editor of National News and Senior Producer of World Report and The World This Weekend.

While serving as CanWest Fellow at Western University in 2014, Jim taught the special topic course "From Grey Goo to Golden Rice: Emerging Issues in Science and Environmental Journalism."

Area of Research: Science journalism

Presentation:
Why the media can't tell their asteroid from their Ebola: Top 10 reasons media get the science wrong
Monday, October 27, 2014

As more and more mainstream media cut back, downsize, and (in many cases) fold up completely, among the first to be let go, bought out and retired are the specialised beat reporters, especially the science writers. That leaves the general assignment reporters to cover the science stories that are dominating our news these days: Ebola, GMO labelling, climate change, alternative energy, drought, fracking, etc. This presentation examined the reasons why they so often get it wrong.