Comment Re:Heh. (Score 2) 260
Mostly it exposes that people love to believe stories they like. And of course journalists love to publish stories that their readers like.
I just don't think that qualifies as news, though.
Perhaps not news, but as a topic worthy of consideration and discussion, you bet. Consider Fox News. It's veracity and accuracy are so poor that almost an entire industry has been built up around calling "bullshit" on so many of their "facts", and yet millions of viewers rely on it to help build their world-view every day. Those ratings wouldn't be there without Fox's heavy emphasis on "stories that people love to believe". Frankly, I find such phenomena fascinating, and often more than a little troubling. Before the chocolate hoax was the whole anti-vaxer phenomenon. To this day, otherwise reasonable people cling to the notion that routine childhood vaccinations are a bad idea, despite overwhelming credible evidence to the contrary and the plain fact that the notion itself was spawned by miscreant for personal gain. Why do they choose to believe bullshit in the face of plainly evident truth? What should we do about it? Can we do anything about it? Should we? It's excellent grist for the discussion mill, IMO.