Excellent on the phsychology of 'herd think.'
Michelle Malkin, Flopping Aces and many others have spent days chronicling how the Associated Press has been bamboozled into reporting an apparently fictitious (or, at least, greatly exaggerated) atrocity in Iraq. Yet AP continues to defend both its dubious story and its equally dubious sources.Why? Why are we watching AP repeat the same basic mistake that CBS committed with Dan Rather's fake-but-accurate National Guard debacle?Two words: "Everybody knows." Anyone who has studied anthropology, sociology or mass psychology understands how false beliefs can become conventional wisdom within groups if (a) high-status individuals within the group advocate the belief, and (b) there is no one inside the group to dispute the false belief. Read the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment