Media and Misinformation

What I found intriguing was the statement from Nyhan's piece about misinformation and healthcare. Nyhan writes, "Until the media stops giving so much attention to misinformers, elites on both sides will often succeed in creating misperceptions, especially among sympathetic partisans." When I read this line, I immediately thought of Isaac Asimov, who said, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" With that being said, does it make sense for the media to stop giving attention to misinformers? The media can easily argue that they are merely providing unbiased coverage with differing viewpoints, "differing" in this case referring to one viewpoint that is factually sound and the other that is based on false information.

The statement from Isaac Asimov seems describe the ground for the media's portrayal of information to the public. Why does the media decide to run stories based more on catchy headlines and captivating images? It's because it works, it brings in more viewers. The Jerit-Barabas piece elaborated on this. Vivid information is easily remembered by viewers. News stories that are packed with emotion are used because people will remember them. It seems natural for the media to go after stories that follow these trends and to some extent that is perfectly fine. After all who wants to hear bland, boring, routine news?

Things start to go bad when these interesting stories with emotional images are combined with misinformation. The vast majority of people when presented with this inaccurate, yet engaging information, will remember it and feel that it is factual. Kuklinski et al. made the point that people tend to hold on to inaccurate factual beliefs and on top of it, feel confident about their ignorance. This is most shocking because, as Kuklinski said, "It is one thing to not know and be aware of one’s ignorance. It is quite another to be dead certain about factual beliefs that are far off the mark."

I can't imagine the media eliminating coverage of misinformers. Generally the misinformers have all the makings of an entertaining piece of news. Not to mention that many of the myths and misinformation that are perpetuated are based on negative information, for example the "Death Panel" information or the 9/11 conspiracy. This negative information is also better recalled by people. At the end of the day the media benefits from misinformation with more viewers and society could be negatively impacted because of the public taking more extreme stances/far right or far left.