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by chimpansteve 1552 days ago
It's the Gell-Mann amnesia effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...) in full flow.

Journalists, almost entirely as a group, are experts in nothing. Colossaly ill informed on every subject, and "research" consists of scrolling through Twitter to find a point of view that backs up their preexisting predudices. These days, many struggle with even basic English and grammar.

I'm not even giving them the credit of indulging in propaganda, because that requires some actual critical thought and intelligence. They're just bad at their job.

2 comments

> Journalists, almost entirely as a group, are experts in nothing. Colossaly ill informed on every subject, and "research" consists of scrolling through Twitter to find a point of view that backs up their preexisting predudices. These days, many struggle with even basic English and grammar.

News outlets have incentives to create clickbait (or to favor stories that otherwise align with the motivations of their financial stakeholders), and "access reporters" have incentives to cozy up to their subjects.

But there are many, many journalists out there doing the actual work of researching subjects in depth and reporting on them to the best of their capability.

This story we're discussing right now - which exposes the corruption at CNN - wasn't generated by some layabout scrolling through their twitter timeline.

At this point it is beyond clickbait / views / funding. It’s clearly pushing the agenda of a small group of people.
Which is yet to be proven worse than the stupidity of the masses
Spent some time in tech side of journalism in late 90s. LA times related.

Someone would write an article bashing some group of other. Group would gets pissed. We meet with group. Guys in charge won’t talk about past. Only about moving forward.

Rinse and repeat. Higher ups only lived in the moment.