regarding the bits about Trayvon Martin: you say that the story in the media is false, but you don’t say what you believe the truth is or give any evidence that the commonly accepted story is false.
Even the media now, grudgingly, admit that their initial reporting was false or heavily distorted (and somehow all the errors went the same way). NBC has even fired three reporters over the most egregious example of this. Unfortunately, since the corrections weren’t as prominent as the initial headlines, there are a lot of people who still believe some version of the distorted initial account.
The media always has a strong incentive to generate a narrative out of the collection of facts they obtain. Certain narratives are more popular than others. This makes the news a terrible indicator of what is going on unless they directly report statistics, which they also usually fuck up. Paying attention to the news seems to be of negative utility.
Even the media now, grudgingly, admit that their initial reporting was false or heavily distorted (and somehow all the errors went the same way). NBC has even fired three reporters over the most egregious example of this. Unfortunately, since the corrections weren’t as prominent as the initial headlines, there are a lot of people who still believe some version of the distorted initial account.
The media always has a strong incentive to generate a narrative out of the collection of facts they obtain. Certain narratives are more popular than others. This makes the news a terrible indicator of what is going on unless they directly report statistics, which they also usually fuck up. Paying attention to the news seems to be of negative utility.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.html
Thanks for the heads-up! I stopped paying attention to the story after about 48 hours.