“Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong,” is the headline on a Washington Post story by Philip Bump. In an age of declining trust in the producers of media products, it’s essentially an attack on the consumers. The message seems to be that average citizens are ill-equipped to separate truth from fiction when investigating controversial topics. Should they trust the Post to do it for them?
There is an outsize appetite for derogatory, counterintuitive or anti-institutional assessments of the world around us. This is in part because alleged scandals are interesting and in part because Americans like to view themselves as independent analysts of the world around us.
Are there countries where people prefer to view themselves as incurious sheep? The Postie continues: