Comment by teddyh
2 days ago
> I really don't get why journalists so rarely do basic fact checking
It takes time and effort with no discernable upside. In fact, knowing the true facts would make it harder for journalists to bias the story in the way they want to without them feeling a bit bad for lying. It’s easier for them if they don’t know.
> that undermines their credibility without them even noticing.
Not really. Even the vanishingly small minority of readers who know the details of the story in question suffer from Gell-Mann amnesia, and continue to believe that all other stories (by the same paper, and even from the same reporter) are perfectly accurate.
> It takes time and effort with no discernable upside.
The true answer is incentives, opportunity and aptitude. Incentives are skewed to writing something that will engage readers, the human version of the social media algorithm. Opportunities are short because reporting is done on deadline without the luxury of time to deeply ponder intermediate drafts. And reporters are writing around the edge of their expertise and training all the time. That specific reporter specializes in "personal finance" so it's a wonder the article even begins to make sense. And writers have to be good at two things at the same time, journalism and whatever they are trying to write about. It's hard to be excellent at multiple disciplines.
When you put it together, it's sort of magical when a news room works at all.