Here is why I don’t trust the media, and you shouldn’t either. As near as I can tell, this is how the system works:
Step 1: Something happens in the non-media world.
Step 2: A journalist talks to one or a few people involved in that event. Sometimes they approach the journalist; sometimes the journalist approaches them. There are many other people involved in the event who don’t talk to the journalist. There is physical evidence about the event, but the journalist doesn’t have it; he just has what a few people told him. It doesn’t matter if the person has an obvious bias. For instance, if the U.S. military just blew up a hospital, the journalist will call up a military spokesperson to find out what happened.
Step 3: The journalist basically prints what that person told him, but with a sensationalistic, ideological, or playing-to-stereotypes spin that the journalist came up with. The goal is to get people to click on or share the story.
Step 4: A hundred other journalists copy the first one’s story, with varying degrees of distortion. They typically have the same spin, sometimes escalating the spin. This spin is completely different from, and sometimes the opposite of, what people who actually have direct knowledge of the event would think.
Why do they do this? I explain the media business model in my post, “The Anger Merchants”. They just want to capture attention, so they can sell it to advertisers. For this purpose, truthfulness is mostly irrelevant. They also want to do this with minimal expense and effort, which is why they copy from each other.
Don’t trust the media as a blanket proposition is stupid. If the news tells you there was an earthquake that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, it is unlikely it is dramatically wrong. If the news tell you a sports score, it is probably right. If the news tells you about tomorrow’s weather, it’s probably about as accurate a forecast as you can find anywhere. If the news tells you the price of gold per ounce, it is likely accurate.
If the news makes normative claims, then it is on shaky ground.
Huemer is right about the news machine. A reporter often works from one or two sources, often interested ones, then a hundred outlets copy the first story and push the spin a notch further for clicks. That pattern is well documented. His three-article AI chain shows it. The Facebook program broke, and by the third rewrite it became Skynet.
The trouble is that he runs the same engine he condemns. He picks the cases that fit his thesis and tells you they came to mind. That is selection. A critic who curates his evidence to confirm a prior is doing what he accuses the press of doing, and he never reckons with it.
The Gaza section is his weakest, and it gives the game away. He tests genocide by nuclear capacity. If Israel wanted to wipe out Gaza it could use its warheads, so no genocide. That is not the legal definition and not how the scholarly fight over intent runs. Then he closes on a cheap line about Jews. “It’s only a genocide if it’s done by Jews.” He drops his own standard of care at the exact point the topic turns hot. The 10-to-1 ratio claim sits there with no citation behind it.
The deeper problem is the move underneath the whole essay. “Don’t trust the media” resolves into “trust my filtering instead,” and he offers no account of why his filter beats theirs. He writes with confidence, vivid examples, and a unifying narrative built to capture attention and flatter a reader’s suspicion. That is the profile he warns you about.
What are some useful heuristics for figuring out truth and who you can trust?
Start with incentives. The first thing to ask about any source is what he gets paid for and what error costs him. A man rewarded for attention will trade accuracy to get it. A man who loses money, standing, or his job when he is wrong has reason to be careful. Skin in the game beats credentials. The forecaster who bets and keeps score tells you more than the pundit who never grades his own record.
Find the track record before you weigh the reputation. Has the person made checkable predictions, and how did they come out? Tetlock’s forecasting work shows confidence and accuracy correlate little, and the loudest experts often score worst. Look for the quiet ones who hedge, update, and keep count.
Watch for costly honesty. A source who says things against his own side, or against his own interest, carries more information than the loyalist. The man who breaks with his coalition pays a price, and the price is the signal. When someone reaches only the conclusions that raise his standing inside his group, hold those conclusions as suspect even when they turn out correct, because he would arrive at them either way.
Separate honesty from competence. They fail on their own. A man can be truthful and wrong, or expert and lying. Score both, and do not let warmth toward one paper over a hole in the other.
Go upstream. Distance from the event breeds distortion. Read the transcript, the study, the filing, the raw footage before you read anyone’s summary of it. Each retelling adds spin.
Give it time. Early reports on a fast-moving event are usually wrong. The first day’s account and the third week’s account seldom match. Patience costs nothing but the urge to have an opinion right now.
Distrust the flattering story. The claim that confirms what you already believe deserves more scrutiny, not less, and the one that irritates you deserves a fair hearing. Most people do the reverse. That is how they get captured.
Mind base rates. A claim that would be enormous if true is usually false, because enormous things are rare and exciting falsehoods are common. Hold the extraordinary claim to a higher bar than the ordinary one.
Reward error-correction. A man or an institution that admits mistakes and retracts them beats one with a spotless record, because the spotless record usually means nobody is checking. How a source handles getting caught wrong tells you most of what you need.
Ask the hard question of yourself and others: how would I know if I were wrong? A belief with no answer to that gets held for reasons apart from truth.
Triangulate across interests. Agreement among people who would gain from disagreeing is strong evidence. Agreement among allies is weak, because they might be copying one another.
Strip the adjectives. Sources often get the facts roughly right and the framing wrong. Pull apart what happened from how it gets described, and you can keep the first while throwing out the second.
None of these heuristics frees you from trusting somebody. You cannot verify everything yourself. The work is not to trust no one but to trust well, and to know which of your beliefs rest on your own checking and which rest on someone else’s word.
