An honest journalist sharing only surprising results can mislead the public

Evidence

We suppose that the journalist is updating her beliefs in light of all of the scientific evidence, so that as more evidence is gathered, she tends to converge to whatever the scientific consensus is. But she only shares what is most surprising. There are a few ways to implement this basic idea. For instance, one way is to have the journalist look at each round of scientists’ results and then share whatever result or results from that round are the most unlikely. Another way is to have the journalist share all of the results that pass some kind of threshold, given her current beliefs: that is, the ones that the journalist thinks are sufficiently strange to be of interest. … In both of these cases, we find that the public sometimes converges to the false belief, even when the journalist and the scientific community converge to the true one. — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 527

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the propaganda-model logic from ch3: selectively amplifying a subset of evidence leads to false consensus. — connects to: Evenhanded journalism can itself bias public scientific belief — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 61; Fake news outperformed reputable news in social media engagement in 2016 — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 18; Journalistic both-sides coverage can be weaponized to manufacture public ignorance — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 628 (+3 more)
• SEED: Article angle: why “man bites dog” journalism structurally undermines science communication even with zero bad faith.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Propagandists need not fake results, only manipulate how results are shared #expands (0.80) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 60
• Journalistic both-sides coverage can be weaponized to manufacture public ignorance #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 628
• News cannot picture reality but only signal that something is happening #expands (0.72) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 358