Plain English with Derek Thompson

The News Media’s Dangerous Addiction to ‘Fake Facts’

42 snips
Jun 7, 2024
Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic and host of the podcast Good on Paper, dives into media biases that skew public perception. She discusses the alarming trend of negativity in news reporting, emphasizing that audiences share the blame for sensationalism. Demsas critiques misguided narratives around maternal mortality and highlights how misinformation impacts public trust, especially during crises like COVID-19. Her insights reveal the importance of critical evaluation of news, urging listeners to seek out grounded, factual discourse.
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INSIGHT

Negativity Bias

  • The most important media bias isn't left or right, but negativity and catastrophe.
  • Audiences share this negativity bias, clicking more on bad news, thus shaping media content.
ANECDOTE

Fake Fact: Maternal Mortality

  • Derek Thompson and Jerusalem Demsas believed the widely reported 'fact' of rising U.S. maternal mortality.
  • Demsas, realizing this fact is untrue, investigated further.
INSIGHT

Measurement Error

  • Maternal mortality data's rise is due to a change in measurement, not an actual increase in deaths.
  • A 'pregnancy checkbox' on death certificates over-attributes deaths to pregnancy, skewing the data.
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