For those that don't know, here is Michael Crichton's speech where it comes from:
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
> then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read
Surely that only works if the same combination of journalists and subeditors work on all the stories? Just because Margaret has written some pop-sci junk about robots doesn't suddenly make Malcolm's commentary on Botswana any less valid.
An expert read articles in his area of expertise and found them to be rubbish. Thus his anecdotal evidence is that the reporters get it wrong and so he shouldn't be so willing to accept as correct articles in areas outside of his expertise. If newspapers get it wrong in areas you know about then why should one think they get it right in areas you don't know about?
Reporters are not experts in the areas they report on. If reporters generally get it wrong on the areas that I know about then why would I assume they get right on the other areas they write about?
If your doctor wrote articles about computers and got it wrong would you be willing to trust him/her on articles about Syria? Tax policy? Politics? You would trust your doctor in the area of his/her expertise and not necessarily about other areas.
Because it's lazy to just assume newspapers are always wrong about everything. If we don't assume newspapers are always wrong about everything, we can assume they are sometimes wrong about some things and sometimes right about other things. That makes reading the news a fact finding mission. Discerning the truth from fiction is just part of life.
You started this thread with a claim of "I don't think any of the popular sources of information are trustworthy." That seems to be a position of default assuming they are wrong.
Saying that something is not trustworthy is literally saying it is not something that is able to be relied upon to be truthful. This means one should not assume the source is correct. It certainly doesn't mean to assume it is wrong.
Because topic areas are in no way equivalent. My expertise is specific and not of broad public interest. But tax policy, for example, absolutely is of public interest. And news organisations have been covering for years. Individual journalists have been covering it for years and are as much experts as anyone out there.
Let’s take Syria for example. Do you think the reporters reporting on Syria and the complexity of what is going on there are experts in foreign policy? I don’t. I don’t think government affairs reporters are experts on tax policy either. I think they interview people and create a narrative and write said narrative. They are not usually experts on what they write about. They are writers crafting a story for an audience. I generally think they try their best but they get it wrong due to pressures of the job and limited time/ability to vet things. Especially these days with dwindling budgets for news organizations.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
Whole speech here: http://docdro.id/4wgVecr