Even the best most respected scientists fall foul of poor practice and bias. This is why we have various levels and types of review within medicine to try and identify bias and remove agendas, but even within this there are issues (the notable one being drug trials being suppressed deliberately by pharmaceutical companies because they give 'the wrong results' meaning theres a bunch of data lost before it even reaches review so the information that does go to review is already biased in some way).
With media, we should constantly review and access and not take for granted.
One of the biggest issues with shrinking numbers of journalists is the amount of time given to reviewing and assessing quality of information is shrinking at a time when the amount of column inches, broadcast time and social media post to fill has rapidly expanding.
Since we have this idea that scientific studies are good and based on evidence we therefore this issue with newspapers taking a newly published study, taking the conclusion as gospel and putting a headline out there that says "eating blue cheese gives you the death" without a) understanding the study b) even looking at the bias or problems with the study. The Mail has long been guilty of it.
The same largely happens with policy think tanks who KNOW the issue with the lack of scrutiny by the media and actively pander to this weakness.
The BBC should know better because it's a well known problem.
What I have been noticing in recent years is cuts to the BBC have meant more of this type of article and in actual fact, instead of leading the news they tend to be following what the Mail and other outlets published two days previously (and had therefore set the media agenda which the BBC then couldn't ignore). This is partly because the BBC have more facts checking to do, but in practice I am finding the BBC increasingly publishing things seen elsewhere almost verbatim so this argument is increasingly losing it's credibility.
It's so frustrating.
There isn't a single media source which isn't facing these issues - because social media has cut revenues and therefore funds for staff to review - to such a huge extent. And the quality overall has suffered due to the competition from social media.
You HAVE to be reading multiple sources and reviewing yourself and understand how to do this. NO source can be trusted in the way it was, unfortunately.
I really lament cuts to the BBC for this reason because people didn't put enough value on the process of review. It then brings the very purpose of the BBC into question because this was its value. It's a circular issue and one that's very depressing.
The internet promised to give individuals and minorities a voice they didn't have before, but that has also brought voices than drown out the worthwhile and have destroyed a lot of the purpose of the media in filtering the bullshit out before the public consume.
We now are in a bewildered state wondering how to deal with it and the proposed solution is censorship rather than better review processes. That review process is now left up to individuals and grassroots organisations.
And here we are on MN on certain subjects, doing exactly that. And being vilified for it by shouty people and righteous people of all sorts because they don't like it when you are critical in any way because criticism isnt welcome and 'bad for mental health' due to a lack of resilience. A lack of resilience comes from a culture where you learn to talk and never have to listen or filter or review critically.