Like most of us, I am not an avid news reader, I have a short attention span. I skim, read the disaster stories (war, crime, etc), I click on the click bait, and on the odd occasion, I will read through an entire news story about a subject that intrigues me.
As a child, I always thought that journalists were geniuses. Incredibly smart individuals who know everything, they’re well researched and incredibly impressive in their ability to remember everything that’s happened.
But as an adult, as I’ve become an expert in my field, learnt more about related fields and slowly begin to understand the world more, whilst at the same time, realising that I don’t know very much at all. It shocks me to realise to a lot of journalists have no clue as to what it is they’re reporting or writing about. They are just wordsmiths who regurgitate what they’ve been told by someone else a little while ago.
Oftentimes, it is the personal opinion of a person we are reading or hearing. Everybody has their own view on a topic, and when they are reporting on it, it’s their view that they’re giving us. We are fed a certain amount of BS and we take it as gospel.
Interestingly, I recently read a piece in regards to volatility and how it is no longer an effective way of measuring risk for stocks. Here’s the gist of it (and I’m paraphrasing):
- A stock whose price continuously and slowly drops in value from $100 to 1 in slow increments is less “volatile” than a stock whose price goes from $1 to $100 in larger up and down movements.
- The first stock is more preferred than the second from a financial point of view because it’s less volatile, whilst the second is considered riskier. But it is obvious that the first stock is the bad investment with its inevitable demise.
Sure, when you read it that way, it’s as though this journalist has a point. Until, you realise that an underlying assumption for volatility is that it is normally distributed. Which means, that it needs to have “random” positive and negative movement in price. Stock 1 does not have that, whilst stock 2 does. Stock 1 does not meet the initial criteria.
This journalist does not understand the fundamentals in financial risk management and yet, speaks about the validity of risk management as though he is an expert in the field.
This is typical of what happens. You have political journalists who have their own agenda, being, they themselves are aligned to a party, a set of political views and ideals. They will often write in favour of one side whilst condemning another.
As viewers and readers, we ourselves need to understand more about a topic before we make informed decisions, sadly, I rely on these people to help me make an informed decision.
Another good example, sporting stadiums. You know what I’m talking about. In the US, the home stadiums of a team are built by the city, the team leases the stadium from the city accordingly. It’s a business after all, and that’s fair enough. But what’s not fair, is that the rental payment is miniscule compared to the cost of building the complex. Nor are the stadiums having the lifespan which they are built for. Watch this John Oliver expose:
I am sure that the reporters for each of these cities and towns, when reporting on teams “asking” for a new stadium and not getting it, and are “forced” to move to another city, they are not reporting on how these teams are actually exploiting the city, having crazy demands, and are not fulfilling the initial assumption that they would be there for the life of amortising the asset?
Our opinions and views are shaped, good or bad, by what we are told. In a world of fast news and faster gossip, we are constantly bombarded with badly researched stories, where we are suppose to believe what we are told.
Is it any question that the American public trusted the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, who are all comedians, than they do any other reporter?
I know that I have trust issues with my reporters, and typically only trust them for factual news, like, “3 bodies have been found in an abandoned warehouse. The police have yet to confirm the identity of the victims.” It’s factual, it doesn’t require them to investigate any further, nor does it require them to speculate on what happened. Just report the facts from another source, a professional source.
Research is something that few journalists do these days, we, as audiences, are forcing them to churn out piece after piece at an all consuming pace. Perhaps it is better for news outlets to employ journalists with a background in the field they’re writing in, rather than people who are good at sentence structure?
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