Shoddy Regard for Factual Reporting and Why it's a Problem

 

 

 

There is an old saying that close enough counts only for horseshoes, government work, and throwing hand grenades.  Well, it appears that some "trusted" publications are applying a similar concept to the topics on which they report.  I can't go a day it seems without reading something from a "reputable" source that leaves me saying to myself -- 

That can't be right,or I know that is wrong.

To illustrate, two recent examples.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9993499/Utah-newlywed-26-dies-falling-extremely-difficult-dangerous-mountain.html

The DailyMail.com recently published a story about a young man who died while trying to navigate a difficult mountain trail in Utah.  The article caught my eye as I have some familiarity with where the tragic accident occurred.  This is an excerpt from the article:

Meanwhile, search and rescue officials are worried about the popularity of the trail, which is nearly 16,000 feet in elevation. 

Hiking experts have said that 'being fit is not enough' and that social media and more people looking for outdoor recreation could be leading more people to attempt the climb, KUTV reported.

So what is wrong with that you ask?  Well, 16,000 feet is pretty high.  So high in fact that there is no location in the continental United States that reaches such heights.  The highest elevation in the lower 48 is approximately 14,500 feet.  The highest elevation in Utah is approximately 13,500 feet and if memory serves me well the trail in question has an elevation of approximately 10,700 feet.

The Daily Mail is a publication that one would expect to (1) Fact check its articles for accuracy and to (2) Have a bit of a nose for obvious errors or things that don't sound right.  Guess what, a trail at 16,000 feet in Utah should create the odor of a purported "fact" that doesn't sound right.

Some may say "Hey - Dail Mail.com is just picking up the story from another source.  That is even worse, like the conspiracy theorist at the corner dive passing down another tall one.  A journalist shouldn't pass on as fact what they haven't investigated to be true.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/new-york-times-forced-to-correct-major-error-on-ivermectin/ar-AAOyngx?li=BBnbfcL

The second example comes from the New York Times.  The Times published an article several weeks back warning of the dangers of people taking ivermectin to treat COVID.  The article stated that 70% of calls in Mississippi to poison control centers were related to people ingesting ivermectin purchased at livestock supply stores.

When I first read the Times article I thought, that is an incredible fact.  When I pondered it some more I thought, that can't be right.  Turns out it wasn't.  The Times recently published a correction noting that only 2% of the calls received by Mississippi poison control centers were related to people ingesting ivermectin  and 70% of that 2% arose in cases where the person purchased ivermectin at a livestock supply store.  That means 1.4%, not 70%, of calls to the Mississippi poison control centers related to intermectin purchased at livestock supply stores.

The New York Times is a publication that one would expect to (1) Fact check its articles for accuracy and to (2) Have a bit of a nose for obvious errors or things that don't sound right.  Guess what, the alarm bells should have been going off.  Does it sound reasonable to anybody that 70% of  poison control center calls would relate to ivermectin?  Me thinks not.

So why does it matter, you ask.  The short answer is credibility.  The slightly longer answer is that when publications that should get their facts right, don't, then people understandably are cynical about institutional fact peddlers (are they biased? do they have any idea what they are talking about?) and seek alternate sources. Factual reality becomes a bit of an individualized, arbitrary and negotiated arrangement.  

A reader of the Daily Mail article may think "what does a silly UK publication know about the dangers of a trail in the US?  It thinks Utah has trails sitting at 16,000 feet. " The message of conveying the dangers of a very technical hike can get lost or marginalized by the credibility gap created by lazy fact checking.

Worse is the case of the Times.  In these days of heated debate and discord on COVID, vaccines, and treatments, the lazy (I am being diplomatic and giving benefit of the doubt as to intentions) fact checking of a statement that was obviously grossly inaccurate creates the impression that the publication has an agenda, and facts be damned.  The message of the potential danger of an alternative treatment gets lost in the credibility gap.  The sense that the Times can be trusted to render objective, factual information takes a hit and people lose trust and again, seek other sources of truth.

Blame social media?  Blame laziness? Blame slacking standards of what counts as journalism? Whatever the cause, the level of trust in institutional information peddlers will continue to erode as they produce news that is not verified, and often less accurate than the gossip down the street.  That gets to be a pretty dangerous scenario if you think there are some times when the real truth matters.

For a long but interesting critique of the US history with individualized truth, check out Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire by Kurt Andersen.