Many years ago, I worked at a dry cleaners. It was not a demanding job but I soon had a working knowledge of the business. Most interesting was that a liquid was used to clean the clothes! Sometime while I was working at the cleaners, the local TV news had a story on the sexist pricing practices of dry cleaners. Huh? The reporter noted that skirts cost more than slacks and that blouses cost more than shirts. Proof! Of course, that was nonsense. So many slacks came through the shop that we had a special press that was designed to press slacks. By contrast, skirts had so much variance that they needed to be hand pressed. A woman's blouse in the 1980s often had shoulder pads and was silk or rayon where a man's shirt was just cotton and run through a normal laundry machine. Likewise, we had a special press for business shirts but blouses had to be hand pressed. This doesn't even consider the pleats! The reporter didn't have a clue. I shook my head but then watched the next news segment as though it was accurate, thus experiencing the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
As the years accumulated, I would again come across news stories that happened upon a subject where I was knowledgeable and it would be biased, inaccurate, or completely wrong. And yet, I would continue to read the newspaper or watch the news to get informed, assuming that the sources were accurate regarding subjects where I had no expertise. It took about a decade after the dry cleaners incident before I learned to distrust the media.
A good rule is to find a source of news that has demonstrated accuracy in fields I know and trust that they are equally accurate in fields I don't know. As long as the source demonstrates accuracy and knowledge, I'll watch, listen, or read even when I disagree with the conclusions. I'll even accept bias, as long as it's out in the open. Interpreting the facts differently is fine, misrepresenting the facts is unacceptable.
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