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The Media Very Rarely Lies - by Scott Alexander

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With a title like that, obviously I will be making a nitpicky technical point. I’ll start by making the point, then explain why I think it matters. The point is: the media rarely lies explicitly and directly. Reporters rarely say specific things they know to be false. When the media misinforms people, it does so by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boosting some events while ignoring others, not by participating in some bright-line category called “misinformation”. Let me give a few examples from both the alternative and establishment medias. II. Looking on Infowars, one of their top stories as I write this is New Vaccine Data Shows Alarming Number Of Stillbirths And Miscarriages Caused By Covid Shot. It’s based on the VAERS system of vaccine adverse events, which looks like this: They draw the predictable conclusion that COVID vaccines caused the spike in 2021 and 2022 and therefore are very dangerous. I haven’t looked into this deeply, but I’m pretty sure I can gue

The Media Very Rarely Lies "With a title like that, obviously I will be making a nitpicky technical point." Scott Alexander Dec 22, 2022 582 630 13 Share Related: Bounded Distrust , Moderation Is Different From Censorship I. With a title like that, obviously I will be making a nitpicky technical point. I’ll start by making the point, then explain why I think it matters. The point is: the media rarely lies explicitly and directly. Reporters rarely say specific things they know to be false. When the media misinforms people, it does so by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boost

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