The epidemiology of General Ignorance

Did you know that studies have shown big breasted women are cleverer than their less amply-endowed peers? Or that evangelical Christians in Brazil have banned the use of USB devices on the grounds that the USB trident is a Satanic symbol? Or that the Early Learning Centre have been removing plastic pigs from toy farm sets to avoid offending Muslims?

If you did, go straight to the back of the class, because these "strange but true" news stories got into the mainstream media despite being total nonsense, as Anthony Cox  points out in his blog. Interestingly, two out of the three stories above seem to have originated as jokes on satirical spoof news sites and were re-reported in the "serious" press as real news. It's a funny old world where questions like this need asking:

Should the readership of the newspaper have to go fact-checking dubious stories? Or should the journalists go and check the facts before publishing them?

So long as simply cutting and pasting juicy, unverified factiods from press releases, The Weekly World News or The Onion is easier and cheaper than the tedious business of fact-checking, I suspect, Dear Reader, that verification up to you.

And while you're about it, check your own preconceptions, too - it's no accident that the loony USB-hating evangelicals story was served up for Guardian readers, many of whom would have no difficulty in believing that religious fundamentalists would come up with some crazy-assed idea like that. It's frighteningly similar to the way that many Daily Mail journalists and readers are ready to uncritically believe that shops are waging war on plastic toy pigs in order to appease Muslims and politically correct liberals.

Lazy, incompetent journalism only flourishes with the reader's consent.