Mediocre journalism does more harm than good.
Tuesday’s article on Google’s autonomous vehicles is the example I will pick on, but I mean no disrespect to either the writer of the piece or those interviewed.
First, the interviewees were not qualified to give valuable insight on the issue. Why not interview an on-campus expert such as Carl Crane of CIMAR, who has been working with autonomous vehicles for years?
The interviewee selection in this article in specific is similar to asking a cosmetic surgeon and a medical student for insight on an experimental cancer treatment.
The interviewees may be good at what they do, but they are not qualified to speak about other topics.
While it might be true that a professor and a student both expressed concerns about the Google vehicle, the plural voice of skepticism indicated in the subtitle is inaccurate and harmful.
This gives the public the impression there should be concern about these vehicles, thus hampering any chance for safer roads. Journalism should be treated more like science where results can be verified and repeated.
In other words, articles need to have better sampling, less bias and a bit of critical thinking in their design.
Seeing this every day, I am quite disappointed with the media.
For better or worse, the media have a lot of influence on popular opinion.
We would be better off if the voice of the media took a logical approach to informing us instead of presenting random blathering to fill space and meet deadlines.
