What chance the European Water Directive against “Volcano doom” in the media?
As Media Monitor blearily boarded the 0705 flight from Heathrow to Hanover on September 10, he accepted the offer of a free copy of the Daily Express. It was easier than refusing, but for the past three days he had been working in the British Association Festival of Science Press Centre (picture, by Steve Connor), and was interested to see which stories from the day before had made it aboard Mr Desmond’s flagship. If all you know of BA meetings comes from their media coverage, then you can be forgiven for not knowing that every Festival of Science has a different theme. These themes tend to reflect whatever drowsy, end-of-season bees are buzzing through the Presidential millinery that year, and this year, the Festival buzzword was “sustainability”. But it was business as usual in the Media Centre, which picked up on such things as proving that a duck’s quack can create an echo; a possible vaccine against nicotine addiction, and the amazing revelation that “most people” cannot tell a gi
