Comment by KennyBlanken
4 years ago
Just because a reporter covering some fluffy science piece might things wrong does not mean a different reporter, in a different department, covering a completely different subject, got things wrong (to the same degree, or at all.) That "hypothesis" is a genetic fallacy.
It also doesn't distinguish between reporting ("Dr. Bob says wet streets cause rain"), analysis ("Dr Bob says wet streets cause rain; is this accurate?") and opinion ("In the opinion of the columnist/author, Dr. Bob is an idiot who thinks wet streets cause rain! This is just yet another example of the violence inherent in the system, decaying the moral fabric of our system."
It also doesn't account for the Dunning-Kruger effect, or on Joe Q Public's near total ignorance on the subject of observational biases and dependency on anecdotes and personal experience.)
That "hypothesis" leverages Joe thinking some reporter covering global warming is "fake news" when it's been a cold, snowy week...to get Joe to think that reporting about current events or politics is equally "fake."
A reminder that a reporter who writes "Dr. Bob says wet streets cause rain" is not publishing fake news. It's reporting the fact that there is someone who said/thinks that. That is different from presenting their statement as fact.
The hypothesis doesn’t say that all reporters always get things wrong. The point is that we can read reporting on something we’re very familiar about and notice how flawed it is, but when we read other reporting from the same source we just assume it’s correct. Whether or not it actually is correct is beside the point - it’s about the assumptions we make internally.
| A reminder that a reporter who writes "Dr. Bob says wet streets cause rain" is not publishing fake news. It's reporting the fact that there is someone who said/thinks that. That is different from presenting their statement as fact.
Cool well it sounds like they are reporting something interesting or truthful so it's fake news in my book.
Yeah they're not literally lying, they're just saying things knowing they will cause you to have false beliefs.
There was a word for that, hang on what was it. Oh, right. "Lying."
also "Deception"
The "hypothesis" it's about us reading, not them writing.
We don't notice how little we know on topics we don't fully grasp, but when we notice them in topics we are more experienced about we don't do anything, we just change topic.