People in this field know how much damage the mass media can inflict by repeating distortions and lies.
A chilling example is the story of Stella Liebeck. She was severely burned by McDonald's coffee, which was held at higher temperatures than industry standards and safety standards call for. She nearly died. She was hospitalized for months and treated for two years. In this video, starting around minute 5, you can see gruesome photos of the extensive skin grafts she was given: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCkL9UlmCOE The photos were shown to the jury. The jury deliberated for 4 hours and awarded her $2.7 million. I would have gone along with that. This was later reduced to approximately $400,000. (The exact amount is secret.) A lot of that went to cover medical bills, which were extensive even though she was 71 years old and on medicare. Wikipedia covers the events pretty well, for them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants I recommend the video. It has attracted 2.5 million viewers. It shows some clips of George Will and others making outrageous claims and outright lies about the case. It seems to me the message of this story is: be careful. Do not assume you know the facts, or you understand what really happened, who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. The mass media may be totally off base. Or Internet web sites and Wikipedia may be the ones who are wrong. You don't know. The consensus may be baloney. Even people in this field need to be reminded of this from time to time. - Jed
