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I found this comic (on PHDComics.com) the other day and just had to post it because it really hits the nail on the head.  While this process is easiest to identify in science news, where original sources are relatively easily available, I think this fear amplification and exaggeration process applies to most things you see reported in the news.  Drill down to original sources and actual data, and everything is always far more nuanced, moderate, and sensible than the story that’s delivered to media consumers.  Of course these days many people don’t even read the news, they get their information through the filter of opinion commentators, radio pundits, or cult-like internet personalities.  So perhaps the cartoonist could have made the cycle more complete by adding an additional step before the paranoid granny where radio/tv/internet pundits tell you that the government/big business/unions are secretly trying to slip “A” into legislation/biased media/your water supply.

One of my absolute favorite political sites on the internet, Politifact.com, recently won a pulitzer prize!  They were apparently the first exclusively online news organization to do so.  And they really, really deserve it.  They do top-notch fact-checking of most of the controversial statements being thrown around by public officials.  They’re also running an “Obameter” where they keep track of over 500 of Obama’s campaign promises and record which ones are kept and which are broken, with comprehensive explanations for each.

Every time I start to get depressed about the sorry state of investigative journalism, the decline of objective reporting and rise of partisan pontificating, or the way our news media has devolved into a megaphone for the most apocalyptic, opinionated, and insane of our politicians and pundits, I surf on over to politifact.com and bask in their worship of sweet, sweet facts, and it gives me hope.  Seriously, if you have even a passing interest in politics, you should probably bookmark politifact and check it a couple times a week.  They only update every once in a while.  If they expanded into a full news agency I’d probably make them my number one source of political information.  Another fantastic, and equally objective, site is Factcheck.Org.  I know I’ve promoted them both before but seriously, check them out:

www.PolitiFact.com

www.FactCheck.org

I doubt I will ever write many articles that fit better into the theme and mission of this blog than this one.  And despite the fact that the piece it’s based on is over 3 years old, it couldn’t be more topical.  There was an article in the New Yorker in December of 2005 entitled “Everybody’s An Expert” that discusses a book by UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Philip Tetlock called “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”.  The article is a fascinating read and I’d encourage you to go through it if you’ve got a few minutes.  But it is long so I’ve tried to draw out the more important and politically relevant points and I’ve added them below, along with a little of my own commentary. Continue reading

The internet was full of jokes today in celebration of April 1st.  I thought one of the best was Yahoo’s new “Ideological search”, both because of its astute social commentary and its near-believability.  Their info page on the subject has this to say:

Tired of being inundated with the contradictory and offensive beliefs of others? Today, the scientists at Yahoo! are releasing a groundbreaking new search filter that keeps controversy out of your search experience. I’m extremely pleased to announce Continue reading

I’m finally catching up on articles I’ve been meaning to write for a long time and this one comes from a New York Times Op-Ed piece which was written last June but which I discovered more recently.  It can be found here. It describes a phenomenon known as “source amnesia”, which serves as yet another example of how none of us are nearly as smart, objective, or discerning as we think we are.

Most basically, source amnesia is just the idea that its much easier to remember a particular nugget of information, than it is to remember the context or source of that information, especially if its information we use, think about, or hear often.  For example Continue reading

Well I’m a little late to the game on this one but for those of you who missed it, here’s Obama’s speech to the joint session of congress delivered tuesday night.  It was a great speech, which I thought was surprisingly informative, with a fair amount of detail.  He struck a more hopeful tone than he has in the past, which is probably what we need, and what we are ready for.  I was surprised at how many of his statements brought the Republican legislators in the room to their feet.  Of course its in the bizarre format of all Presidential speeches to congress, where everyone claps after every other sentence.  If you don’t want to deal with all of that then you can just read the transcript here.   

One thing that struck me during this talk, but which I’d like to develop further in the future, is how similar all of our values are in America.  I think, as much as political pundits like to portray political differences as a war of values, in most cases we all have very similar basic values and goals, just different ideas about how to go about achieving those things.  Obama touched on values a lot in this speech and when he was talking about those things was there really much there for any of us to disagree with?  If there are some conservatives in the audience maybe they can let us know in the comments.