Michael Crichton observed this and called it the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. I think he said publicly that the name was to ride on the coat tails of Gell-Mann's public success:

>>> “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.”

I wish I could upvote this more. This is such a pain for me, to see a reported story and see an obvious question that any serious journalist could answer just sitting there, unanswered. It made me wonder what they teach in Journalism school these days.

As it turns out, not much about investigation. I looked through the curriculum at Berkeley[1] (a respected journalism school) and found things like J260[2] which is a seminar more on "why" of investigative reporting than the "how". There is also a "web skills"[3] class, but this is just about building a web site.

They really should consider adding a 'using the Internet to find people, corroborate sources, discover links between individuals and corporations, and to track ownership relationships.' Something that, as the author points out, is really a bunch of useful web sites and how to click them.

[1] https://journalism.berkeley.edu/curriculum/

[2] https://investigativereportingprogram.com/

[3] https://journalism.berkeley.edu/course-section/j215intro-to-...

Good read. Definitely shows how little work is often put into investigating a story nowadays, even from publications considered reputable in the past.

And it's worth considering given how many controversial stories that lead to internet mobs and threats had just as little work done on the investigation side as this one. The covington kids story had no real investigation done on it, since if someone had actually asked witnesses or looked into video evidence beyond the original tweet, they'd have seen a completely different series of events. Same with the story of that guy thrown off a plane for speaking Arabic; a bit of research would have proven the story was not what it seemed there either.

And there are plenty of stories where non existent people/companies/organisations have been written about after a troll submitted a fake news tip or what not. Hell, it's surprisingly easy to get a questionable story into the media, since often no one will investigate it properly. I know, I did that by accident.

As for why that's the case? Eh, probably time. The internet has led to a 24/7 news cycle for every publication in the world, and has created a situation where being 'first' is often seen as more important than being right. Even sparing the 10 minutes necessary to investigate a story like in the article is presumably seen as a 'waste of time'.

Either way, good article.

If journalism, as a profession, is to add more societal value than random blog posts, I think there needs to be a fundamental reworking of the medium. As it currently stands, the medium itself encourages sloppiness. A modest proposal:

1) Articles should, like legal briefs, support each non-trivial point with a footnote or citation. Primary sources, such as presses releases, documents, and transcripts, should be hyperlinked from the footnotes.

2) Long form articles—unless they appear in a literary magazine—should contain section headings ordered in a logical manner.

3) An adversarial aspect should be introduced into the medium. When a judge receives a legal brief, she doesn’t review the brief in isolation. Typically, there is an opening brief, a response, and a reply. It should be a matter of journalist practice to write response articles to other articles. Aggregators like Google News could then make it easy to see, for example, the Wall Street Journal’s response to a New York Times article.

Writers for media (I hesitate to call them “journalists”) have no incentive to find facts. They have an incentive to craft a story, based on whatever information they already have in front of them. If they already have most of a story, and a cursory search turns up no obviously interesting facts which add to the existing story, they’ll leave it there. There is simply no reason to go digging.

It’s only where there’s no story without digging, and/or where the more you dig the more story you get, when you get investigative journalism.

Can I just take a moment here to plug how vital Internet Archive (mentioned by the story, sounding like it's just a thing that the internet does) is to, well, most things, and getting more important by the day?

I haven't donated to them yet but I'm going to now.

It's seemed to me for a while that you could take an infosec-style approach and use voluntary controls, policies, procedures and third-party non-government certification via accounting firms to give the public more confidence in the press, something that is obviously fundamental to a democracy.

Just like in infosec, controls (etc) do not guarantee safety (accuracy), but they let you know that processes were followed and that fact is documented. Third parties (accounting firms) confirm that you have the evidence of having followed your processes. Corruptable? Sure. Better? Definitely yes.

Just like in infosec: if you have evidence that every week you've plowed through the access logs, you're more likely to have caught an intruder/mistake. The approach tends to route out single acts of sloppiness and subterfuge and turn mistakes in to conspiracies, which is a much harder thing to pull off than a single actor looking for fame or a raise.

For my part, I genuinely believe these organizations are trying their best to do something very hard but that their own efforts at fairness can be undermined by a lot of factors, especially money. The natural incentives (clicks/$) need to be counterbalanced with self-imposed "regulation" that is third-party verified.

[EDIT: s/factories/factors

> We are lucky to live in a time when we are all so empowered.

I remember when I was a teenager, before the internet era. Our science teacher thought us about critical thinking and not blindly trusting the media. Everything he said made sense, but still, I felt that I was lacking the proper tools and expertise to challenge what was said in reputable medias.

It's much easier nowadays, Thanks to the ability to search the web, better knowledge/expertise in some fields, better understanding of how medias work... yet it's not easy. It is a skill that needs constant practice, and one shouldn't fall in the other extreme not to trust anything.

I really think this should be taught in school. Examples of bad journalism, recent government lies, marketing and PR...

Author Blake Ross ("founder @firefox and former prod dir @fb") makes great points about poor quality / outright lack of investigative journalism in reporting. Worth the 2 min to read.

I don't quite understand how you are supposed to follow that advice... no one has time to personally investigate everything. We have to outsource SOME of our thinking.

This is a little beside the point, but I'm going to hold the author accountable for his take on a pressing issue.

Author makes the mistake of not holding the retailer responsible for what they sell. Walgreens, Target, and GNC, to anyone who knows what they're doing, are NOT reputable, in terms of herbal supplements.

Go to any naturopath or natural health practitioner and they're going to recommend herbal supplements with their own branding, specialty shop, or specific brand. They're not going to give you prescription, and call it into Walgreens like an allopathic doctor will.

Author is effectively saying "It's not the reputable retailers responsibility to stock their shelves with legitimate products."

Why do you think they sell crap instead of quality herbs? The cost is lower.

Think for yourself, and take your health into your own hands and you'll be a healthier person, no doubt.

Calling for the FDA to regulate and save the day because a bunch of uneducated people blindly trusted big corporations...no.

Always value contributors to my media literacy guide. This message is a key point that underpins all the examples I list.

https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....

There's also one for engineers in the tech industry:

https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/softwar...

I don't believe there is anyone I've ever met whose thoughts were original to them in all particulars. I think it has been very seldom where I have met anyone that has had one original thought in their head, I'm pretty sure most thoughts, including mine were thought somewhere else and transmitted via some media. Probably in most cases the only originality lies in the assemblage of the thoughts and how they interact.

Seems a bit like pot calling kettle black considering what Facebook allows to be advertised these days.