Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
I think the media is to blame for quite a lot of this because they increasingly seem willing to report/propagate all sorts of nonsense, the extent to which they do this being linked, to a greater or lesser extent, to those paying the bills. Once news is out there it's easily distorted, spreads like wildfire across the internet and is impossible to stop. There are those suffering with terminal confirmation bias who'll lap up what they want to hear and spread the word but there are many more, I believe, who can have their views changed on the basis of anything ranging from blatant lies to slight exaggerations if they're exposed to enough of them.
|
I think we underestimate how much it is our own confirmation biases direct the media though. They're feeding us with what we want but because to be commercially successful they need a rather broad base the mainsteam press isn't as bad as the Internet. The internet though can go even more hyper-partisan as appeal to a narrow group feeding them everything we want to hear.