Last year I had a student in a first-year class who was the first in his family to attend a university. When the father learned that his son s professor was on television, he revised his opinion of a university education not, I suspect, because of what I had said on TV but because the media had used an academic as a resource and thereby had legitimated higher education. Many academics are interviewed by media at some point in their careers political scientists and economists are the most likely to have repeat appearances.
Many academics decry shoddy and shallow journalism, infotainment trumping critical analysis.
Academics and journalists have different jobs. It short sighted to spurn the public s appetite for the media for it is the same public that supports universities through their taxes and financial endowments. The media world, like the academic world, is large and diverse. Television is a visually driven medium. Invariably, after I appear on TV some people tell me they saw the item but, while they may recall the topic of the interview, they are almost at a loss to remember what I said.