This article touches on one of the highest-payback practices I've developed over the last few years: going to the original sources. I am constantly rewarded by this; typically finding out that the downstream analysis misunderstood some aspect, latched on to only a fraction of the whole story, or willfully misrepresented by speculating on absent data or by inserting a plausible narrative for items that fit a private agenda.
Almost every time I check some thing in the news or public opinion, it's either wrong, misinterpreted or too simplified. Often it's just people talking from their ass. It's amazing how we can word as a society.
"Almost every time I check some thing in the news or public opinion, it's either wrong, misinterpreted or too simplified"
I'd attribute that to the decline of real (read professional) journalism, not an actual decline of society. People have been talking from their asses probably for as long as they can speak, but Internet allowed them to bypass usual bullshit meters.
It may be worth reading "The Chief", a bio of William Randolph Hearst then. Follow that with outright political slander in newspapers in the 19th Century.
Even Walter Cronkite might oughta not said what he did w.r.t. Vietnam. More time to pull out would have saved lives, and many, many people have felt very badly about that. That one is complicated.
No doubt that the sheer quantity of "news" has dragged more muck off the bottom of the barrel, but the good old days weren't so good.
You only remember the journalism being better because you remember the good stuff and forget just how much crap there was in a newspaper from 30 years back. The Internet surely allows more to be published and by anyone, but generally "journalism" in the past was just as focused on "how to we sensationalize something to sell papers" as current "news" is on "how do we get more views with no effort?"
