Five Corrections to The New York Times

"You see a subordinate making a mistake."

"Your cab driver took a wrong turn."

I suspect that some form of the amnesia effect is necessary for us to function in a complex society.

Is there a better name for this though? from behavioral sciences or psychology?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear#Criticism_from_s...

> Several scientists whose research had been referenced in the novel stated that Crichton had distorted it in the novel.

Just because one journalist sucks doesn't mean the next one does, and slagging on the next guy only because the former one did a poor job amounts to a combination of genetic and adhom fallacies. Editors were never intended to be subject matter experts on everything their writers write about - stick to scientific journals if that's the level of assurance you want. (And depending on how you feel about the reproduction crisis, even that might be questionable.)

[1] https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/letter-response-jan-17-article...

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the press, including the freedom to make mistakes and even outright lie. There is no godlike authority that can tell truth from fiction without fail, and having government censors telling people what they can say (especially w.r.t. political speech) would invert the relationship between the people and their government, making government the master instead of the servant.

Instead, we rely on an educated readership to identify bias and mistakes and call them out, as has been done here. People get the journalism they deserve. To the extent we're failing to teach our children critical thinking skills, we're putting our democracy at risk.

The NY Times and other resources currently considered "credible" have earned that credibility from the people not through government permission but by generally providing a useful service to its consumers, despite all the mistakes they make and biases they present.

The NY Times in particular has unfortunately been burning through that hard-earned credibility capital at an alarming rate, even long before the current last few years, with the result that there are large portions of the country that no longer trust it like they did, with good reason. More recently they have taken the bait proffered by Trump and his ilk and lowered themselves to his level, spinning most articles I've seen with more political or oppositional bias than in the past.

I can only hope this is a cyclical phenomenon, where the citizenry/readership becomes ignorant of the related history and its challenges, simply because we've lived through a period where the battles were won and we could take such things for granted. Just like our predecessors, this generation is going to painfully relearn that everything printed (or typed) should be taken with a grain of salt and cross-checked against multiple sources.

This would be part of the executive branch, and run by someone appointed by the President. Do you think that would be net positive or negative?

"The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors."

I also was curious as to how supplement was defined within the context of publishing and again according to wiki:

"A supplement is a publication that has a role secondary to that of another preceding or concurrent publication. A follow-on publication complements its predecessor, either by bringing it up to date (e.g. the Index Catalogue), or by otherwise enhancing the predecessor's coverage of a particular topic or subject matter, as in the Tosefta."

In my opinion the difference is insignificant.