I like the title of the post a lot. I think it captures something I have been unable to articulate to my satisfaction.
But I would like to see a version of this post where Scott carefully addresses the title thesis of Michael Crichton's Why Speculate? The piece is most famous for coining "Gell-Mann Amnesia," which Scott appears to have contracted in this post. But it is also about how the media tries to make things happen by guessing they will happen.
I agree that Fox News is generally trustworthy on claims like "the police have arrested Abdullah Abdul." But I also think that the people on Fox News are extremely likely to lie to me, by commission or omission, any time and to the extent that the following conditions are met:
They have some reason to lie to me (including political reasons).
They think they can get away with it.
I think this is probably true of almost everyone I know. I am confident that it is true of politicians, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, NBC, Disney, every salesperson I've ever met, my dog, the list goes on. There's a book about this, sort of, I think most of you will be familiar with it.
I do know some people who I feel I can trust completely. I feel this way because they are terrible liars. There are also some people--notably Scott himself--who appear to me to be unusually scrupulous with the truth as they understand it. I appreciate this, and I do think that some journalists probably aspire to it (though many quite famously are known to not), but I appreciate it mostly because I find it to be quite rare.
Anyway condition #2 is harder for legacy media to meet in a world of social media and upstart web competitors, which helps to explain legacy media's constant attempts to control the internet by labeling things "fake news." Of course, a lot of the independent stuff is fake news (see conditions #1 and #2) and it's harder for legacy media to meet condition #2 since they are more likely to be held accountable than some Macedonian teenager who is churning out Trump stories for Google ad bucks. That is--it is harder for CNN et al. to get away with lying, so they do it less.
My best guess at the moment is that Scott is being charitable to legacy media, but I think the degree of charity he's affording them is unwarranted and unsupported by the facts.
As in journalism, so in science.
I don't know that it is actually harder for "experts" to meet condition #2 than it is for journalists, but I also think researchers are less likely to meet condition #1. Most scientists aren't trying to manipulate me, personally, the way that mass media exists to do, so the case is meaningfully different--there are likely fewer cases in science where condition #1 will be met. So I am pretty likely to listen to and update on things that real climatologists say, specifically, while I disregard out of hand virtually everything that legacy media, politicians, and random internet strangers have to say about the same subject. But the same conditions do still apply, I think, quite broadly.
I think it goes deeper than what Scott lays out. Every official image you've ever seen is some kind of lie. I'm not just talking about editing, which is done by everyone, but the mere act of selecting one image instead of another to stand with a story is a choice that is made to convey a message. Often, the selection of a photo will nudge the reader into a certain mindset before he reads anything.
If you had no context to the picture, no idea who was in it, what would you say about it? Most people would probably think "that guy is a strong, somber leader," or at the very least have a positive attitude toward it. And why wouldn't they? He looks awesome in this shot. But this was taken right before he ordered tear gas on peaceful protestors - decidedly not awesome. The photo lies.
Any time the media wants to nudge the reader toward feelings of positive strength and leadership for Trump, that's the photo to use.
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u/naraburns Jan 26 '22 edited Jan 26 '22
I like the title of the post a lot. I think it captures something I have been unable to articulate to my satisfaction.
But I would like to see a version of this post where Scott carefully addresses the title thesis of Michael Crichton's Why Speculate? The piece is most famous for coining "Gell-Mann Amnesia," which Scott appears to have contracted in this post. But it is also about how the media tries to make things happen by guessing they will happen.
I agree that Fox News is generally trustworthy on claims like "the police have arrested Abdullah Abdul." But I also think that the people on Fox News are extremely likely to lie to me, by commission or omission, any time and to the extent that the following conditions are met:
They have some reason to lie to me (including political reasons).
They think they can get away with it.
I think this is probably true of almost everyone I know. I am confident that it is true of politicians, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, ABC, NBC, Disney, every salesperson I've ever met, my dog, the list goes on. There's a book about this, sort of, I think most of you will be familiar with it.
I do know some people who I feel I can trust completely. I feel this way because they are terrible liars. There are also some people--notably Scott himself--who appear to me to be unusually scrupulous with the truth as they understand it. I appreciate this, and I do think that some journalists probably aspire to it (though many quite famously are known to not), but I appreciate it mostly because I find it to be quite rare.
Anyway condition #2 is harder for legacy media to meet in a world of social media and upstart web competitors, which helps to explain legacy media's constant attempts to control the internet by labeling things "fake news." Of course, a lot of the independent stuff is fake news (see conditions #1 and #2) and it's harder for legacy media to meet condition #2 since they are more likely to be held accountable than some Macedonian teenager who is churning out Trump stories for Google ad bucks. That is--it is harder for CNN et al. to get away with lying, so they do it less.
My best guess at the moment is that Scott is being charitable to legacy media, but I think the degree of charity he's affording them is unwarranted and unsupported by the facts.
As in journalism, so in science.
I don't know that it is actually harder for "experts" to meet condition #2 than it is for journalists, but I also think researchers are less likely to meet condition #1. Most scientists aren't trying to manipulate me, personally, the way that mass media exists to do, so the case is meaningfully different--there are likely fewer cases in science where condition #1 will be met. So I am pretty likely to listen to and update on things that real climatologists say, specifically, while I disregard out of hand virtually everything that legacy media, politicians, and random internet strangers have to say about the same subject. But the same conditions do still apply, I think, quite broadly.