I try to limit my technical news to only a few trusted sources. Too many editors and producers send their political analysts or newly graduated journalists to cover technical issues for which they have little or no background or previous knowledge. That is how we get questions about whether a black hole might have swallowed a missing airliner. Occam’s razor, folks. Start with the basics and pay attention.

I once worked for a scientist who was interviewed for the local evening news. We received a copy of the unedited interview and many of us in the lab watched it. The reporter had him tell her the whole story in his own words, and when he finished a few minutes later, she asked him to tell it again more briefly. A minute or so later she had him do it a third time even more briefly, and when he missed an important step she mentioned it for him as a quick correction, and he finished the summation in only a quarter minute, or so. That was the version that aired.

I was impressed that she had understood that the missed step was important to understanding the story and the technology. She was not a technology reporter, and probably did not know anything about the topic, but she knew how to interview.

The same scientist was talking to some of his non-scientist friends about the plasma in the sun’s corona. One of his friends asked how blood gets to the sun, and he realized that most people learn the word “plasma” from TV medical shows and don’t know that the word also means a gas that is so hot that it is no longer a gas — a fourth phase of matter.