On the What Drives Us podcast, Russell and I often take time to make fun of journalists who just do a bad job at being journalists. I couldn't wait until this week's podcast to bring these examples of journalism failure to your attention. First we have AutoSpies.com, a site not exactly known for their on-point journalism (just do a search for Prius to see all of the unsubstantiated stuff they run with). They import a lot of their news topics from 3rd party sources, and when you don't create your own content or at least edit that content, you're gonna end up with a stupid headline like this one. It's pretty obvious that 40 MPG is not going to best the Prius' 50 MPG, but when you click on the "Source" link that takes you to 4WheelsNews.com you'll see that further down in the article the author wrote "while the 2010 Toyota Prius with an automatic gearbox gets 35 mpg highway and 29 mpg in the city." Apparently the article is really referring to the Toyota Yaris, but hey, the Yaris isn't exactly link-bait. The 2nd example of bad journalism today comes from PC World, a publication that thinks the Chevy Volt is "completely electric, without [a] gas combustion engine". Um, you're confusing the LEAF and the Volt there, PC World. Here's a screen capture for you: This is the second pretty big mistake that PC World has made in the last week. On May 13th, Jeff Bertolucci wrote an article about the upcoming Sprint HTC Evo 4G and included some ridiculousness about you needing to buy extra hardware in order to use one of the features of the phone. He has now edited the article, but you can check out the comments that refer to his mis-guided writing. Of course, nowhere in the article does he refer to his edit after the fact. I see these kinds of mistakes happen all the time, especially when the subject is the Prius. These two just jumped out to me as needing to be brought to light.
When I reflect on just what kind of person has to be writing that material, I'm reminded of one of George Carlin's lines. "Think about how stupid the average person is; now realise that about half of them are dumber than that."
Since the mainstream media has laid off most of it's dedicated science and technology journalists (to save money) - they're instead left with non-technical types that are probably trying to do their best to cover technical stories - but are way out of their league and it shows to the few that actually have a clue. Unfortunately, most readers/viewers don't (have a clue) and the mainstream media executives probably jsut don't care that they're turning out error ridden science and technology stories.
But there is a difference between "errors", which can happen to anyone, and simply not having a hot clue what they are talking about. Most people (e.g. you or I) with a reasonable degree of pride would make sure they had at least a basic understanding of what they are writing about to avoid looking like a complete fool. And if the writer is a neophyte on the topic, where is the editor in charge? I suspect you are bang on in that the media management just doesn't care enough...
Stupid is as stupid does. Or to look at it from the other end they do not discriminate based on ability. The media company wanted cheap. They got cheap. As long as the sales hold up they don't care.
I suspect that it's worse that you think. Both the writers and editors are completely oblivious (to the errors) and their management likely doesn't care. What's sad or troubling is that some of the more important stories that should be getting more ink - namely oil dependency/peak oil and climate change/global warming - require a reasonable degree of scientific literacy. Otherwise, jounalists will continue to be deceived by those who use the uneducated media to promote their own (false) agendas. For example, and of relevance to this forum - why isn't there more public debate (in the media) over raising the CAFE standards to 50 mpg - in a few years. If Toyota can do it TODAY with a Prius - why can't everyone else in a few years?
To the best of my knowledge, Japan still has a 6 month backlog. IMHO, dummy magazine writers helps reduce the demand and keep our Prius affordable. Bob Wilson
Well I suppose that is good if I put on my selfish hat But if I instead think about this while basking in the warm glow of my family, I have to admit that it's bad for the whole movement towards greener technologies and the benefit that will have on my children's lives...which I would like to at least think outweighs my own selfish interests :hug:
