Everyone makes a big deal about the Flint Water Crisis. Of course it wasn't good, I'm not implying that at all, but a Reuters found through test that about 4000 cities have around double the amount of children lead poisoning from drinking water. Among these include parts of Rutland, Savannah and Brooklyn. You just never hear about these cases.
If anything, the story shows that most journalists are not capable of reporting on complex subjects. Here's what Michael Crichton had to say on the subject:
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
I'm curious how much evidence there is for this "effect" being a widespread thing. A google search on the topic seems to mostly bring up blogs uncritically citing Crichton's speech to buttress their takes on "the media", as if it is some monolithic entity. Certainly, there is sloppy journalism out there, but there is a lot of quality reporting as well.
To be sure, it's important to think critically when consuming information, but I think that it's overstating the case to say that "most journalists" are incapable of reporting on complex subjects.
In my opinion, the effect is widespread. Have you ever read an article where you had inside knowledge of what was going on? If so, you will be be shocked at how many simple errors are made. The Gell-Mann effect is very real.
And yes, that's why it's incumbent on people who read journalism to think critically and not just assume that what they read has any relation to the truth.
Sure. The very first time I encountered this was actually in high school! The local paper took pictures of some local kids (including me) playing football in the snow. Later one of the pictures appeared in the paper with a caption describing the action. But the caption didn't make sense at all. They just looked at the picture and guessed what was happening but all the details were wrong. I know it's a small thing, but I was shocked at the time.
Another example from my early years was a feel-good story about a teenage girl who made $1 million from a website showing MySpace backgrounds. I went to the girl's page. The girl was "keyword stuffing" the words "car insurance" into all the pages and tricking Yahoo into showing car insurance ads. The girl was basically scamming Yahoo, she wasn't an inspiration at all.
If you're not finding errors and fallacies every time you read the paper, you're not reading closely enough.
Thanks for the anecdotes. I try to avoid being overly credulous, but I'm not an expert in much and rarely have inside knowledge of news-worthy things, so perhaps that's my problem.
Can you give more spellings for 'Yooper.' I knew the word having been there a few years ago but had trouble figuring out how to spell it. I honestly thought it was just 'Uper' or 'Youper'
Coney Island restaurants in Michigan serve Greek food and chili dogs with onions and mustard. You can't throw a stick without hitting a Coney restaurant in Detroit and its suburbs. The most famous are Lafayette and American, which are next door to each other in downtown Detroit. They started as a single restaurant run by two brothers. The brothers fell out and one opened the place next door. Their chili styles are different, and people will comment on whether they prefer a Lafayette or American coney dog. I'm a Lafayette girl, myself.
only reason I got that one was the TV show "Quantico" where one of the characters is an Arab from Dearborn. Not Detroit, Dearborn. I wonder why there are so many there?
My mom lived there a few years while growing up and when we visited relatives there she'd bring home the Vernors. She was so happy when she found it for sale in Missouri. (I preferred 7Up for tummy upsets.)
"They might seem like different names for the same style of hot dog, but Coney Island dogs are smothered with a meat sauce that's not exactly chili—plus onions and yellow mustard. Chili dogs can be topped with meat and bean chili as well as cheese or cheese sauce." Meat Sauce is a weird answer, but chili is incorrect according to somebody's opinion on the web. :D
Lots more sports trivia you could have mined as well: Gordie Howe, Bobby Layne, Ty Cobb, Magic Johnson, the Bad Boys, the Fab Five, Hank Greenberg, the Hit Man and Sugar Ray. But no complaints--you got the Brown Bomber.
And then there's Henry and Gerald, George and Mitt, the Purple Gang, Kellogg and Post, Jimmy Hoffa, Walter Reuther, Aretha, Madonna, and Elmore Leonard.
The Vernors question almost got me. Being from The Mitten and seeing that it stated to be specific, my first answer was pop (FYI: the term pop was coined from another Michigan beverage brand: Faygo)
Also, I may have misunderstood the question about the only National Park in Michigan, as there are more.
I just finished the US States badge on this quiz! I did the states in mostly backwards order. I have six badges left to go. I'm well chuffed with how my memory, which normally seems to be pretty bad, performs well on these quizzes.
To be sure, it's important to think critically when consuming information, but I think that it's overstating the case to say that "most journalists" are incapable of reporting on complex subjects.
And yes, that's why it's incumbent on people who read journalism to think critically and not just assume that what they read has any relation to the truth.
Another example from my early years was a feel-good story about a teenage girl who made $1 million from a website showing MySpace backgrounds. I went to the girl's page. The girl was "keyword stuffing" the words "car insurance" into all the pages and tricking Yahoo into showing car insurance ads. The girl was basically scamming Yahoo, she wasn't an inspiration at all.
If you're not finding errors and fallacies every time you read the paper, you're not reading closely enough.
And then there's Henry and Gerald, George and Mitt, the Purple Gang, Kellogg and Post, Jimmy Hoffa, Walter Reuther, Aretha, Madonna, and Elmore Leonard.
Also, I may have misunderstood the question about the only National Park in Michigan, as there are more.