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.”

Whole speech here: http://docdro.id/4wgVecr

> 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?

> he shouldn't be so willing to accept as correct articles in areas outside of his expertise

Let me refocus that to highlight the silliness:

> If doctors get it wrong in areas you know about then why should one think they get it right in areas you don't know about?

If my doctor knows not even the slightest tiniest thing about computers, the internet, etc., I'm still going to trust him on medicinal matters.

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.

> Reporters are not experts in the areas they report on.

Some are. Some aren't. But if you're not an expert in the same area, how can you judge?

(eg. "MD" in Private Eye is a doctor and therefore reasonably qualified to report on medical things.)

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.

The point isn’t that one should assume they are always wrong it is that one shouldn’t assume they are always right.

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.

The solution to biased or inaccurate sources isn't to consume no sources. It's to consume more than one source, preferably many. When you see the same story reported in 6 different ways, you start to notice patterns. You see that certain sources leave out crucial information, while others focus on those. You see headlines written in salacious forms, and sometimes you see a headline change during the course of the day because, perhaps the original one wasn't generating enough clicks. For a critical reader, these clues help to make one more critical, not less, no matter how biased the source.

Human memory is really bad at these kinds of subtle differences. You are just as likely to recall what seemed at the time obviously false information. This is why “stay on message” is the fallback plan when peddling bullshit, it works.

In the end you are much better off avoiding highly biased sources than trying to use them. This might change if you are doing a dissertation or something, but not for day to day stuff.

I made a point to say biased because I believe everything has a bias. There is no such thing as bias free, and any source that tries to claim no bias is trying to trick you. I personally avoid "ertremely biased" entirely; you only go to places like Brietbart if you only want to buy what they are selling. But the fact remains I can go to any story there and point out the flaws because I have a whole universe of other facts to work with.

Each source writes its own take, but what if the truth is Option Three, which none of the biased articles support?

It's incumbent upon the reader to consider all options. This includes the options presented, and options omitted. Recognizing when options are omitted and why is a great way to find the truth. This is where critical reading comes in.