[theodric]

Every time I see news coverage of technical areas in which I have expertise, and they get something glaringly wrong, I wonder for a moment how much other stuff they're getting wrong when I don't notice because it's outside of my specialization. Frankly terrifying, since the news shapes opinions for most people.

[xenonite]

Indeed. In my experience, the bad feeling gets even worse when noticing something wrong in something you are not specialised at all.

However to your point, Michael Crichton describes the rather sad "Gell-Mann amnesia effect": One tends to still trust the other pages of the magazine.

[cpach]

Hopefully people don’t use TV news or newspapers as their only sources of information. Newspapers are good for getting a feeling for what’s currently going around in the world – but one also need to complement them with other publications. E.g. books, meta-studies, etc.

Let’s take an example: If I want to know what’s going on in Yemen this week, I’m probably better of reading The Economist than borrowing a book at the library. But if I want to get a deeper understanding on the situation in Yemen, I’m probably better off reading a book rather than a news article.