You are here: Welcome » Fiona Fox

Fiona Fox

Fiona Fox is the director of the Science Media Centre (SMC). Despite having no previous background in science or science communication, Fox has been afforded, since her appointment in December 2001, the status of expert. She has, for example, been included in a working party on peer review set up by Sense About Science, and in a steering group on improving communication over science policy and risk set up by the Office of Science and Technology. In 2003 Fox delivered a lecture at Green College, Oxford, on the challenge of adapting science to the mass media.

Controversy over Science Media Centre

Within a matter of months of Fox becoming director, the SMC was embroiled in controversy over its activities. It was accused of operating as “a sort of Mandelsonian rapid rebuttal unit”[1] and of employing “some of the clumsiest spin techniques of New Labour”[2]. There have also been controversies about both the SMC's funding and Fox's background.

According to the profile provided by the SMC, Fox previously ran “the media operation at the National Council for One Parent Families” and was “Head of Media at CAFOD, the Catholic aid agency”. In addition, the SMC says, Fox “has written extensively for newspapers and publications, authored several policy papers and contributed to books on humanitarian aid”.[3]

What they do not say is that throughout much of that time Fox led a double life. It's one which seriously undermines the SMC's claims to be open, rational, balanced and independent, not to mention its being in the business of ensuring the 'that the public gets access to all sides of the debate about controversial issues.'

It's a double life that connects the SMC's director to the inner circles of a political network that compares environmentalists to Nazis and eulogises GM crops and cloning. More disturbingly it is a network whose members have a long history of infiltrating media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote their own agenda. It is also a network that has targeted certain media organisations and sought to discredit them or their journalists.

Fox's own journalism might also suggest that she is none too fussy about either truth or openness when it comes to pushing her agenda It is perhaps revealing that someone whose own journalism has been called 'shoddy' and 'an affront to the truth', and has proved enormously controversial, has been selected as the director of an organisation which claims the role of making sure that controversial scientific issues like GM crops are reported accurately in the media. 1)

Back to top