Science is not only the subject of reflection in journalism, but scientific cognition is one of the ways in which journalists make sense of the processes and phenomena of the world around them. Therefore, it is logical to compare the specifics of the cognitive activities of a scientist and a journalist. This will help us to clarify more clearly the specifics of both types of activity in various aspects.
A scientist’s functions include describing, explaining, and predicting the processes and phenomena of reality that constitute the subject of her study, based on the laws she discovers, i.e. in a broad sense, a theoretical reflection of reality. The results of work are a theoretical description, a process scheme, a summary of experimental data, a formula. Unlike activities, the result of which is known in advance, scientific activity gives the increment of new knowledge and the result is fundamentally non-traditional. From the aesthetic (artistic) way of mastering reality, which is characterized by art, scientific differs in that it seeks to logical, the most generalized objective knowledge. Art is characterized as cognition in images, science – as thinking in concepts. Journalism is factual-conceptual-imaginative empirical cognition.
Art develops mainly the sensual and figurative side of human creative abilities, while science develops mainly the intellectual and conceptual side. Journalism is a mixed type.
A person engaged in art has a predominantly right-hemispheric, figurative type of thinking, a scientist – left-hemispheric, logical type. A journalist, as a rule, is characterized by a mixed type of thinking, especially this applies to reporters. According to studies, “left-brain” journalists are more often engaged in economic journalism, “right-brain” – in issues of culture and art (in the first case, about 70% of “left-brain”, in the second – more than 60% of “right-brain”).
Science, unlike religion, is oriented to the criteria of reason, while religion is based on belief in supernatural beginnings. Science is materialistic, religion is idealistic. Journalism is syncretistic, but closer to earthly, concrete materialism. However, faith – the idea, ideology – also plays a large role in journalism, sometimes correlating with religious faith, as was the case in Soviet journalism.
Science, like culture and art, is cumulative in nature, i.e. it accumulates and summarizes knowledge. Journalism is momentary; its texts disappear in time, remaining only in the archives, although certain side effects on society and the audience certainly remain. The impact on the consciousness, subconscious, behavioral and emotional sphere of people who are in the field of information influence of the media, even if this influence is indirect, of course, can also be classified as cumulative effects. The traditions of journalism itself, the secrets and methods of the profession remain and are passed down from generation to generation. And if we understand journalism as a continuous information pulsar that sends information to noosphere banks, then journalistic information also has a cumulative nature, whose possibilities and potencies are still unknown and unexplored.
Science strives for a holistic and multifaceted coverage of the objects under study. Journalism is fragmentary. “The immediacy and rapidity of mass communication inevitably limits the depth of the journalist’s penetration into the subject, and he cannot ignore this circumstance in his judgments and conclusions.”[1] If, however, we take it in the totality of all informational influences, in their universalism, then journalism is also capable of embracing processes in their situational continuity quite broadly, making an informational operative model.
The history of the development of science is a complex dialectical combination of processes of integration and differentiation; as in journalism, it experiences processes of bifurcations, revolutions, and radical paradigm shifts, and in this too is similar to journalism.
The sciences are divided into fundamental sciences, which study the laws governing the behavior and interaction of the basic structures of nature, society, and thought, and applied sciences, which use the achievements of the fundamental sciences to solve not only cognitive, but also social and practical problems. Of course, journalism is closer to the applied fields of knowledge, although its ubiquity and all-pervasiveness obviously conceal some fundamental laws, although they are more likely to be probabilistic laws.
Science distinguishes between theoretical and empirical levels of investigation. Journalism belongs mainly to the empirical type of cognition, but there is also a layer of specializations that make extensive use of the theoretical type of cognition (analytics).
What is important in science is the sustained repeatability of connections between empirical objects; for journalism, it is not so important. On the contrary, the journalist tries to deal with uniqueness, dissimilarities, individualities, and tries not to enter (and this is impossible) the same stream twice.