<story><title>Gell-Mann amnesia effect</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonathanstrange</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a bit skeptical about this one and wonder to what extent the effect is actually measurable for &lt;i&gt;newspapers&lt;/i&gt;. The problem seems to me that not every topic is covered in the same way by journalists and that the journalists are usually also specializing in particular topics and don&amp;#x27;t just write anywhere.&lt;p&gt;A science journalist has usually studied some natural science but has to cover all of them and has to simplify a lot, so a trained expert will find a lot of inaccuracies. This is not true for the journalist who reports international events and affairs - these are based on much simpler facts such as &amp;quot;which government decided what&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;which spokesperson of some organisation said what when&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to get worldly facts like this right, which mostly come from multiple news agencies anyway, than describing news about theoretical physics to laymen in terms that are 100% accurate to a physicist.&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I&amp;#x27;m not so sure that the effect really exists in any significant way.&lt;p&gt;Another issue is, of course, from where else you would get accurate news if not from journalists and press agencies.  I&amp;#x27;ve never heard of any reasonable and viable alternative from critics of traditional news media. Cell phone videos by citizen reporters with hysterical voice over can hardly count as a good substitute. Neither are copy&amp;amp;paste news aggregators or bloggers.&lt;p&gt;At some point you&amp;#x27;ve got to trust your newspaper (or read a better one!) unless there is explicit counter-evidence from elsewhere against the story. Most botched reports get corrected very fast anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coldtea</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;This is not true for the journalist who reports international events and affairs - these are based on much simpler facts such as &amp;quot;which government decided what&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;which spokesperson of some organisation said what when&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s only true when the coverage consists of retelling such basic facts, but that&amp;#x27;s a small part of what journalists do.&lt;p&gt;Anyone with knowledge of international events and affairs can spot all kinds of errors, omissions, and plain falsehoods when articles cover such topics -- just as well as one does when it comes to say physics or computer science.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Another issue is, of course, from where else you would get accurate news if not from journalists and press agencies.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most journalists and press agencies cater to the lowest common denominator. There are press sources that go far deeper [1] but those are not what people usually read for their &amp;quot;news&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;For science, for example, you can go directly to the journals and hardcode scientific outlets. For most regular news you can go directly to the wire services, read accounts from people on the ground, and read deeper outlets with more analysis than mass market newspapers like the NYT.&lt;p&gt;[1] Even if they introduce a certain delay on the news (which in most cases is irrelevant, it&amp;#x27;s not like anybody will need to act immediately upon some news regarding foreign affairs for example).</text></comment>
<story><title>Gell-Mann amnesia effect</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonathanstrange</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a bit skeptical about this one and wonder to what extent the effect is actually measurable for &lt;i&gt;newspapers&lt;/i&gt;. The problem seems to me that not every topic is covered in the same way by journalists and that the journalists are usually also specializing in particular topics and don&amp;#x27;t just write anywhere.&lt;p&gt;A science journalist has usually studied some natural science but has to cover all of them and has to simplify a lot, so a trained expert will find a lot of inaccuracies. This is not true for the journalist who reports international events and affairs - these are based on much simpler facts such as &amp;quot;which government decided what&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;which spokesperson of some organisation said what when&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to get worldly facts like this right, which mostly come from multiple news agencies anyway, than describing news about theoretical physics to laymen in terms that are 100% accurate to a physicist.&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, I&amp;#x27;m not so sure that the effect really exists in any significant way.&lt;p&gt;Another issue is, of course, from where else you would get accurate news if not from journalists and press agencies.  I&amp;#x27;ve never heard of any reasonable and viable alternative from critics of traditional news media. Cell phone videos by citizen reporters with hysterical voice over can hardly count as a good substitute. Neither are copy&amp;amp;paste news aggregators or bloggers.&lt;p&gt;At some point you&amp;#x27;ve got to trust your newspaper (or read a better one!) unless there is explicit counter-evidence from elsewhere against the story. Most botched reports get corrected very fast anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;which spokesperson of some organisation said what when&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Quite a lot of news reporting does this, but it&amp;#x27;s extremely hard not to accidentally let &amp;quot;a spokesperson said X&amp;quot; implant the belief &amp;quot;X is true&amp;quot; in your mind unless you&amp;#x27;re very vigilant. So reporting these kind of official statements without fact-checking the underlying statement can be surprisingly misleading.&lt;p&gt;But then there&amp;#x27;s also the ability of media to just make or dig up a scandal out of whole cloth by finding people willing to make the statements they want. Today&amp;#x27;s fiasco is the Times trying to resurrect the idea that Michael Foot was a Soviet agent, a claim which they lost a libel lawsuit over decades ago. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;inews.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;ex-sunday-times-ed-andrew-neil-leads-criticism-of-times-over-soviet-sympathiser-michael-foot&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;inews.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;ex-sunday-times-ed-andrew-neil-lead...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>