Politics The 4th Estate - Media....is it truth or fiction? TFP pundits will examine.

He looked like he was giving a campaign speech for 2016.

Some candidates will need to use that line on both sides of the aisle.

 

Whenever people discuss whether the media are reliable, I mention "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia." Gell-Mann was a Nobel prize winning physicist. He commented that people who have expertise or knowledge in a certain area can read a story in the newspaper about that subject and think to themselves "that reporter has no clue what he's talking about. This article is gibberish." They then turn the page and read the next article, on a different subject, and consider themselves well-informed even though on the subject they know about they consider the same newspapers unreliable.

Gell-Mann was right.

In the few instances where a case I was working on got written up in the press, I found that the articles were never more than 2/3 to 3/4 correct. Often less than that. I don't know whether it's because of incompetence, laziness, stupidity, deadlines or something else. It may be because journalists have no expertise about anything and so are trying to come up to speed very quickly in an area they are unfamiliar with. But the bottom line is, beware of what you read in the press.

And that doesn't even begin to talk about biases.

 

One of my journalism professors, a former working journalist, said, "Most journalists know a little about many things, but not a lot about just one thing." It would nearly impossible for general assignment journalists to read everything they need to read in order to be truly thorough. A journalist who specializes in one area, and isn't under deadline, should make every attempt to be as thorough as possible.

There is always going to be tension between the experts on the subject, and the journalists who attempt to write about the subject. Some experts are pompous asses who offer only partial information, the same as some journalists are lazy and/or incompetent.

 

That's an excuse, not a refutation. It may even be a good excuse. But what it actually should tell you is to be very wary of what you read in the newspapers.

 

Yes, be wary because much of what you read in the newspapers is not written by journalists who specialize in certain fields. And even the ones who do don't always get it right.

There are some subjects (a complicated scientific breakthrough, for example) that would require lengthy multi-part articles to be properly reported. Many times that information has to condensed into much shorter articles, hence they won't be complete even if written by journalist who specializes in the subject.

For better or worse, newspapers are for-profit businesses. Fires, murders, sensational trials, and the like sell papers/subscriptions. Long articles on comparatively 'boring' subjects that only appeal to a small number of readers do not.

 

It's worse than that. Even simple articles about what happened at a location at a specific time are rarely more than half accurate, at least the ones I have read about events I witnessed personally. I believe it's the pressure of deadlines combined with the writer's preconceptions. It's not only about expertise.

 

I agree.

Another factor is newspapers have been closing, and the survivors have been majorly downsizing. Less advertising revenue means smaller papers with fewer articles, esp. fewer detailed articles. Most people over 40 (certainly an arbitrary cutoff age) probably remember large cities having two, perhaps more, competing daily newspapers. Not anymore, with few exceptions.

 

It's all about ratings, putting out quick news stories on deadline, and going in the direction of the billionaire owner wants it to go. Corporations spend millions to buy advertising and get their message out in the news cycle now, and I doubt that it will change anytime soon.

 

And the companies that own the media are even more blatantly using their news media to promote their entertainment media.


When Goliath Media Monopoly starts ordering their Serious National & World News Division to include an entertainment feature on a new movie made by a company owned by GMM........................

 

I'm not sure I would put all the blame on the media for Trump and the Tea Party. Sure the media didn't do a very good job, but there are plenty of politicians and think tanks who helped to create the Tea Party. And even though they were thinking the same things Trump is saying, only The Daily Show really would do the digging to find out what these people said in the past.

 

One solution (or step in the right direction): We need to recognize which news outlets are "good" and support them with our money.

Find good journalism and support it. Pay for a subscription.

 

For decades politicians, POTUS in particular, and/or their "people" have controlled journalist with a policy of If you don't play by our rules, we won't invite you to the game. IMO this is why journalists never demand a straight answer when politicians dance around instead of actually answering tough questions. It's a game. The journalists are "allowed" to ask tough questions (to keep up appearances?), but aren't allowed to pursue a truthful answer.

I can see Trump & his staff making sure that any journalist with the nerve to seriously question him won't get a second opportunity to do so.