Why conspiracy theories are getting more absurd and harder to refute

[Eric the Green]

(04-14-2019, 02:29 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(04-14-2019, 10:32 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(04-14-2019, 07:01 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: Because today's media is unreliable. It's exaggerating or giving a false narrative a lot of the time. When you doubt the mainstream media you look elsewhere. I see the media as just a fear mongering industry designed to make money off of people's irrationality.

Please define "today's media", and what makes them unreliable.  If your point is that all media make errors, then you can remove the adjective "today's".  Reportage is not a science, and many of the sources reporters use have agendas that are deeply hidden and hard to identify.  The good media will own-up to their mistakes, and publish corrections.  If you're being selective and only eyeballing certain media, then you should identify which media you mean.

And on the topic of money: all media have to pay to exist, so saying they impure because they serve commercial interests is pretty disingenuous.  Even PBS and NPR need to serve more than their viewers and listeners.  That doesn't make then fear mongers.  The world is already scary enough without media hype to pump it up.  That's not to say that there aren't media entities out there that specialize in fear.  There are.  They do not constitute more than a fraction of today's media, though.

Do you remember the Iraq War? Where the media praised Bush to no end and made up the fact that Iraq had WMD?

I do. They didn't look beyond the official story enough in that case. I don't think it's right to forever discount them because of that mistake. And there were dissenting voices in the media, which multiplied tremendously as the war got going. Distrust of journalists is one unfortunate consequence of government lies about US involvement in wars since the sixties.

Quote:Do you remember the Y2K scare where there was this big frenzy and when everyone was talking about how the world would end?

I'm not sure who told that story, but there was some basis for concern, though not panic.

Quote: Do you remember how the media said there was this giant hole in the ozone layer from hairspray and that all of the rainforests would be cut down rendering us unable to breathe?

The ozone layer indeed had a giant hole, and regulations against hairspray and freon use allowed the ozone layer to heal. Cutting down rainforests was never said to render us unable to breathe, but it is helping to destroy our climate and kill off many species that are needed.

Quote: Do you remember how the media said eggs were bad for you then retracted? How it said to eat all these carbs then retracted? How it pushed margarine?

The media just reported what the doctors said, and doctors today have a notoriously-limited understanding of diet and health. They are getting better, but no advice works for everyone.

Quote: Do you remember how we were told about how we would face all kinds of biological and crop warfare from terrorists and how we could be done for?

There is some genuine concern if biological weapons fall into the wrong hands. Should we not be concerned about this?

Quote: How now people are saying that climate change is going to make billions of people go extinct?

This is potentially correct, although under-reported. And it has to be told correctly. If this happens, it won't be all at once in our lifetimes.

Indeed, one of the chief examples of the irrational in our society today is those who reject the findings of climate science that the globe is warming and human use of fossil fuels and other activities such as farming and lumbering are responsible. My finding is that the most fervent deniers are either paid by the industry, committed to neo-liberal "anti-socialist" ideology, or more often, both.

Quote: How 24/7 news made people afraid and thinking crime rates are going up when in actuality they're going down and the media frenzy about how everyone is in danger? I'm only a Civic born in 1986 and remember all this.

You have a point there. Nowadays the media is reporting crime rates accurately, but for many years crime stories have dominated news (especially local news), and makes us feel we are less safe than we are. It also encourages people to commit crimes in order to get noticed and recognized. Crime stories entertain, so this appeals to commercial media's need to satisfy the bottom line. I notice most of the TV network documentary shows that blossomed and boomed in the 1980s have been converted to murder stories.

I agree with David; the mainstream media makes mistakes, and doesn't look below the surface enough; but it is usually correct as far as it goes. Journalists today do generally good work. If the Network News and big time pundits were less hampered by the limits of commercial media, perhaps they might look beneath the surface of official accounts more often than they do. But still they often do good reporting that goes beyond the official story put out by the government.