There was a survey! Many news reporters were on site, interviewing people who entered the grounds. They talked about how they were taking the government back, how they'd like to get their hands on Congressional leaders, and how they'd be back with rifles on January 20th if Congress didn't do the right thing. Without random sampling, there's no easy way to know if it was 20% or 80% of the insurrectionaries thinking that way, but even 20% of such a big crowd leaves enough people to do some serious damage 2 weeks from now.
Is there any specific reason to believe the media accounts are false, or just a general principle? I feel like this is starting to approach the level of skepticism where it's impossible to be convinced of anything.
Who said they were false? Click bait is rarely false just misleading.
My local news runs a promo every night that they have some super important message that you need to hear "what you could be doing wrong with kids". When they finally share it's something like 'yoga is good for your health'.
Journalism is a business. All news orgs are judged by selling papers to driving clicks.
Seeing a few people saying something means a few people said something. Assuming it applies to all and skepticism sets in.
Some people may follow through with that, or they may not.
The media tells stories, social media tells stories, our friends and family tell stories, and our own mind tells stories. But they are just stories. Some of them will surely come true, some of them will not.
It feels like you know, just as it feels to the people at this riot like they know - it is the very same underlying phenomenon: human consciousness, with its ability to see into the future, to read the minds of millions of people, to know the fine details of what happened at an event even though no one who was actually there may have witnessed it with clarity. It is the most powerful device on the planet, but if it isn't kept under control: watch out (as we saw at the Capitol).
