<story><title>The Increasing Problem with the Misinformed</title><url>https://www.baekdal.com/analysis/the-increasing-problem-with-the-misinformed</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>AlldenKope</author><text>1. Arguably the biggest misinformation problem involves scale. Media spends a lot of time talking about something of relatively small impact, like guns, or transgender bathroom protocols - and these are important - but practically neglible compared with, say, discussing solutions to large-scale problems like poverty&amp;#x2F;income inequality, or mosquitoes and communicable disease - which is exacerbated by climate change, which drives droughts and more poverty, which makes calls to jihad more appealing to disenfranchised young men, and so on. Not that we must always think big picture - part of solving big problems involves breaking them up into smaller problems, but the amount of time devoted to addressing issues of critical importance to our society is grossly disproportionate compared with issues where the magnetism is primarily emotional.&lt;p&gt;2. This article doesn’t really address a) Politifact’s cherry-picking or b) its ownership. Want to paint a politician as more honest? Fact check more statements from them that you know to be true. As long as the aggregate score tops the competition you’re against, you’ve nudged your readership. The article also doesn’t go into ownership - Politifact is owned by a newspaper who has endorsed a candidate, who in turn has owners with interests.&lt;p&gt;3. As for sites that explain the news, there should be more of them to emphasize what’s important and why, and what the potential solutions are. Sites like Vox, however, are biased and often intellectually dishonest. They’ll use opinion as evidence for their conclusions.  See for example (adblockers on) an article where they are claiming to assess media bias against Sanders, and say things like he is “at sea in foreign policy” without providing any evidence or analysis to support that claim. Even 538 - though I admire their data-driven approach - write scathing editorials against Trump. I don’t like Trump, but to say 538’s journalism is objective is to admit illiteracy. See headlines like “Trump doesn’t have a monopoly on intolerant supporters”.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Increasing Problem with the Misinformed</title><url>https://www.baekdal.com/analysis/the-increasing-problem-with-the-misinformed</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>whack</author><text>I agree with the article&amp;#x27;s premise that a misinformed public is dangerous to democracy, but I disagree with the premise that this is a new development. The public has always been misinformed for one simple reason: everyone loves to form opinions on how things ought to be, but few people feel the need to do the research and homework needed to actually form credible opinions on the topic.&lt;p&gt;This is not a popular thing to say, but democracy would work a lot better if misinformed people were simply not allowed to vote: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;outlookzen.wordpress.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;democracy-by-jury&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;outlookzen.wordpress.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;democracy-by-jur...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>