TERN Webinar: Who gets to tell the story? The challenges and opportunities for ensuring the science gets heard

From the TERN Webinar registration page:

Every day, decisions are being made about which nature stories reach the public. A radio producer chooses which scientist gets airtime. A media broker decides which expert to pitch to journalists. A researcher becomes a content-creator and bypasses both, but has to build an audience from scratch. Each faces the same underlying question from a different angle: is important science getting heard?

As Australia’s ecosystems face mounting pressure from climate change and habitat degradation, the researchers and practitioners tracking these changes need their findings to reach the right people – the public, policymakers, conservation groups and other scientists. But getting good science in front of an audience isn’t just a matter of clear writing. It’s shaped by who picks up the phone, who gets a callback and who never gets asked at all.

In this webinar, three people who sit at very different points in that pipeline pull back the curtain on how it actually works.

A radio broadcaster, who must decide which stories and voices reach mainstream audiences. A science communication broker, who matches researchers with media opportunities. A science blogger/content creator, who has sidestepped the gatekeepers altogether, trading the problem of being chosen for the harder problem of being found.

Together, TERN’s August webinar speakers unpack the incentives, biases, and trade-offs behind nature communication in 2026 and what researchers can do to make sure their work doesn’t just get published, but actually reaches the people who need to hear it.