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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Even if the reporters and advertisers are separate, someone is putting things together. A few months ago, I saw the following on page 2 or 3 of the New York Times:

An article about an Asian countryAbove it, a photograph of a building in a different Asian countryTo the right of a photograph, an ad for jewelry, with a very similar look to the building.

And then there are the people who write the headlines. There was an article online in (IIRC) New Scientist. The article explained very clearly that the previous year might or might not have been the hottest on record, but that the question didn't really matter because a near-future year would surely have been hotter. The headline? Something on the order of, "The controversy over global warming, and why it doesn't matter."

If I wanted to manufacture consent, I'd let the reporters get all the ethical training they wanted, and focus people's attention on whether the reporters were 95% or 98% ethical, and whether that was good enough. Meanwhile, I'd place a few partisan interns where they'd graduate to writing headlines and doing layout.

Chris

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

@Zubon

"The Hated Enemy"

I don't think anyone has expressed hatred or inimical feelings towards journalists here; strong skepticism, yes, but that is different. Maliszewski's point is that we are deceived most roundly by our own "friends."

"accepts facile stories"

But this is exactly the point of the Stephen Glass case and even the famed Jayson Blair case. Facile stories from "one of us" are accepted by "us." It has nothing to do with what our out-groups believe. It is how we allow ourselves to be duped by our in-group members - because our vanity tells us that our in-group is honest and objective and wouldn't lie to us. We need to be more skeptical of ourselves.

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