An unconventional guide launched this month aims to help young researchers get involved in media coverage of science.

The guide, Standing up for Science, has been produced by a group of UK graduates in the Voice of Young Science (VoYS) network. We asked our fellow researchers what they thought about talking to the media. The answers were disappointing: no time, no opportunity, not enough experience, said many. Although a few respondents were more positive, most were sceptical. The public isn't interested in science, they said, and journalists only want to misquote us.

But at earlier VoYS workshops, science journalists from The Times, The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, and others voiced rebuttals to this. Yes, journalists need to sell newspapers, so they have to make science stories exciting. But by and large they want to report accurately. Their task is complicated by deadline pressures, and little or no control over headlines.

Scientist–media interaction would benefit from enthusiastic early-career researchers eager to make science exciting and relevant to the public. Anna Fazackerley, who has written for The Guardian and the Financial Times, suggested that young people could bring a fresh perspective articulated in informal, engaging language.

In Standing up for Science, we tried to help researchers understand the media's agenda and objectives, even if they feel they're not cut out to be communicators themselves. We conducted interviews with newspaper and radio journalists, press officers and scientists who had talked to the media. We put the most interesting conversations into an informal guide to address our peers' concerns.

Some worried that journalists would 'sex up' their stories. “I was horrified when they asked, 'Can we say you've discovered anti-gravity?',” said Emma King, a cosmologist at the University of Nottingham. Scientists must be prepared to deal with hype and take control in an interview, advised scientists and press officers.

On the other hand, countered Mark Henderson of The Times, “If we overplay something it is usually because somebody has overplayed it to us.”

Scientists should become media-savvy, asking journalists about their deadline, their audience and the angle of the story. The more such scientists there are, the more accurate and interesting science coverage will be.