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.
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.
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.
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.)
"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