http://www.thespacereview.com/article/119/1
Whispers in the echo chamber: Why the media says the space plan costs a
trillion dollars.
There is an old children�s game that teachers occasionally inflict upon
their students as a morality play. A group of children are placed in a
circle and then one of them is told a story that they are to whisper to
the person to their right. That child is supposed to whisper it to the
person on their right and so on until they reach the originator, by
which time it no longer resembles the original story. Distortions are
introduced by miscommunication or deliberate fraud. The lesson is that
you should not believe everything you hear.
We saw the modern media version of this game recently when rumors
emerged that President Bush was about to unveil a new space policy that
called for a return to the Moon and an eventual human mission to Mars.
Media reports quickly declared that this plan would cost a trillion
dollars or even more. That number was widely repeated within the modern
media echo chamber, often by supposedly reputable sources. It may have
already done substantial damage to the Bush space policy, creating
public opposition to what is perceived as a massively expensive program
and scaring away any possible supporters.
The $1 trillion cost estimate is wrong. It is based upon a completely
inaccurate reading of historical data and deeply flawed mathematics. But
the problems are worse than this. Not only was an inaccurate number
repeated endlessly by the media without confirmation, but the flawed
calculations were repeated again and again by various people with their
own agendas. Reporters also appear to have ignored or evaded obvious
weaknesses with the original source of the information, preferring to
repeat an inaccurate number that they saw repeated endlessly rather than
seek out better information. The story of the $1 trillion cost estimate
raises some troubling questions about how modern journalism is
conducted.
*******
Rest at above link. 3 pages. The above quote was about 1/4-1/3 of the
first page, just to give an idea as to the total size of the article.
Kinda ties in with Bernstein's criticism of the media today, which Rob
posted about on Saturday.
Julia
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