Politics, international relations, arts and science appear regularly in the media. But does the media do justice to the complexity of these topics or does the need for sound bites and sensation-grabbing headlines swallow up expert analysis and explanation? John Lloyd complains that while ‘the world is very complex…It takes a lot of understanding’, and the mass media ‘inform us less than they used to do’. Niall Fitzgerald, the chair of Reuters, has challenged the way media stories about Africa perpetuate ‘the image of a continent in constant crisis’. Ben Goldacre, the Guardian ‘Bad Science’ columnist, asks ‘Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong?’ Meanwhile, leading figures in the arts protest that media coverage is more focused on celebrity or sensation than with art itself. How do journalists answer the accusation that the media can’t handle difficult subjects and deliver stories that really challenge the status quo?

What do people want to read? Does the consumer know or are they unwittingly led to devour the unsuitable, the unsubstantiated and the easy? Tommy Sheridan claims the News of the World ‘are the real hypocrites and liars’. Maybe that is why they get the readership figures they get, not by printing what is true or difficult but telling the stories people want to read.

Where does the fault lie – with the consumers, the producers, the advertisers or the writers? Is it merely lazy editors, contracting lazy writers to produce bland copy for uninterested readers which partially satisfy inept advertiser? Or is it the writers themselves? Have all the good writers gone? Were there halcyon days of someone researching, understanding and presenting a theme in a relevant, topical and significant way? Where are the intelligent writers who care and see where our futures lie and what needs to be done to make sense of them? Do we need a philosophical and radical enquiry into the existing media order? This is not a facile idea, but a chance to reclaim the media world with issues that matter, with relevant concerns and a bright and meaningful discourse.

Information is everywhere – research a Google click away.  The enquiring mind has turned into a mind of mush and muddle – we have everything at our fingertips, so why bother leading a reader to where they could go anyway if they had the gumption, the inkling or the thirst? And everyone fights for the golden media coverage – the holy grail of junior press officers everywhere. When they pitch they are asked for a hook – make it matter. They do not really have one so they invent, distort, twist and sell it as if it really matters. Good luck to them, we cheer.

When we have an issue that is really important, no one cares. They say it is too complicated; the editor would not like it; the readers do not want it. So they spin it to offer highlights, snapshots and long-shots to try and capture the imagination of someone to get it covered. The essence of the story dwindles and is superseded by a slant, a trick to make people read before they can actually realise what you they are reading. We are all encouraged to flick, to skim, to save time and move on, channel hop, speed dial, skim read, text. The media focus is on the best action sequence, the juiciest gossip, things that really matter and can get you talking and maybe gossiping.

And who is the consumer? Market research will be presented with spiky certainty for anyone who claims that a newspaper or broadcaster does not understand their audience – we give them what they want, they shout. So the savvy marketers feeding editorial have a very clear picture of what the reader wants, and the reader says that they want pretty simple stuff,mildly challenging, faintly amusing, but nothing too intense, or dense or complicated because they have no time for this. But what does this mean? Does a sloppy review or an inaccurate piece of reporting suffice? Is it just the same old stories going round, just different players?

Then there are the advertisers – what influence do they have as they respond to circulation figures and audience cohorts and profiles? They want to create and remain part of the zeitgeist.

Or has the reader been asked if they really want a detailed scientific analysis on the synthesis of molecules? Or would they prefer the some appealing graphics, a gentle interpretation? But if you want that you should turn to the specialist press. Ah yes, the trade press where all the gems lie, if only you had the patience and the knowledge on where to buy them and access them. But that cannot be the answer because then it is an elite educating and informing an elite, a self-perpetuating discourse where everyone already has their views and is not really prepared to challenge or question.

Is the battle for hearts and minds lost? Perhaps the public reader does not want to see another cover story on Iraq, AIDS or Paul Valéry; they want Ashley and Sheryl. One theory suggests that the reason we developed speech was to gossip. We care about what is happening in EastEnders, and on the Love Island and in gossip magazines because it is only here that you can make meaningful connections with colleagues and friends, not through the difficult subjects. It is accessible and welcoming, unlike art angels, the amygdala and African anthropology. This is where the real battle for media interest takes place.

Throughout history the difficult subjects did not live in separate social and intellectual worlds. The Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance and even Enlightenment creator was likely to be a skilled craftsman, a dedicated thinker, a challenging and at times subversive philosopher, whether he worked, as Brunelleschi did, as painter, sculptor, developer of one-point perspective or the engineering genius of the dome of the Florence cathedral. Despite their vision as artists, Leonardo, Dürer and Morris were expert scientists and technologists. Scientists like Copernicus and Pasteur were skilled artists. In recent years, one only has to look at the number of mathematicians who are also gifted musicians, from Einstein to Schweitzer. Jacob van’t Hoff, the first Dutch Nobel Prize winner, said ‘The most innovative scientists are almost always artists, musicians or poets’. It seems that creativity depends on a capacity to integrate incompatible experiences, to join mathematics and poetry. Where are the journalists trying to make these connections?

Nam June Paik, the Korean artist, has stated ‘some day the artist will work with capacitors, resistors and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk’. The scientist will often look for an aesthetic dimension to their work, and will seek out the new, the untested and the dangerous in order to express what has never been seen before. Artists and scientists historically have always used the same tools and materials, and at times the work in one world defined and shaped the discoveries in another, from glass blowing influencing the technology of medicine and the industrial revolution to painting, the science of colour and optometry. It is all part of a whole.

When science reaches the edges of the known it merges into philosophy and aestheticism. The arts distil down to the power of ideas, and the rigour of craft and skill. These two areas of human endeavour share so much. The media rarely enter this world. Maybe they now could?

Perhaps it is time that we found some common agendas and discussions. We are still living in a conceptually divided world. Science, business and economics seem to sit on one side, art, emotion and personal values sit on the other. Most recognise that the divide is destructive, but no one argues for the divide to be healed. Perhaps if we re-established the conversation between worlds we would find a way to make them seem more attractive to us all. Would the whole of society benefit from having a deeper representation of the artistic and scientific communities discussed intelligently, in one harmonious way? ‘Only connect’, as Forster said, the synthesis is all. Maybe this is the role of the media – to make these connections.

In a world of specialisation and commercialisation, is it any longer possible for specialised sectors to talk meaningfully to one another? Such a dialogue is of increasing importance. We live in a world of technological surfeit, our wishes and needs catered to by science in ways that were the stuff of science fiction only 50 years ago. Science continues to push back its boundaries, into areas where the public see both opportunity and threat.

As subjects become more complex, the language needed to understand them and sympathise with them is beyond the reach of all but a tiny cast of initiates. Even the educated public has no access to understanding the potential of the next scientific revolution. The arts – literary, musical and visual – can be one of the bridges to public awareness at a time when such awareness is an indispensable first step towards understanding and acceptance or rejection.

Additionally, the media could serve to inject an older tradition, that of civilised humanism, into these debates. The arts have always sought to answer the question ‘What is life for, and how do I live it well?’ Away from sound bites and sensation, this harmonisation is the question we need to ask ourselves and have the media discuss. Let’s begin.

Jonathan Tuchner is director of press and public affairs, Arts & Business