Food for Thought

[Guest guest]

Below is a snippet from a much longer webpage. The snippet is a good

introduction to the other two parts of the essay. The second part

deals with lies and cover-ups of the dangers of smoking. The third

part of the essay delineates how Pharmaceutical companies buy

protection from Congress and the FDA, leading into vaccination lies

and dangers. The first two sections are a lead into the third

section. Very well done and quite convincing.

 

By the way, even though the website's name is nakedauthors.com, there

is no nudity. So the site is child safe and work safe.

 

Alobar

 

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I don't remember exactly when or where (the New Yorker? The Sunday New

York Times?) It was just a snippet from an article about something

else, but it's really stuck with me for a lot of reasons.

 

The gist of it is that there was this guy--a journalist--who happened

to be friends with an astonishingly successful investor. This investor

had made serious BOATLOADS of money in the stock market, and one day

his buddy, the journalist dude, got curious about the way his own line

of work might be tied into his friend's success, so asked him which

news outlets he'd relied on for accurate information on which to base

his buying and selling decisions. Newspapers? Magazines? Television

news reports?

 

Here's what the investor said (I'm paraphrasing more, from here on out), " None. "

 

How can that be? asked his friend, to which the gazillionaire dude

replied, " I realized a long time ago that there are two subjects in

the world about which I know a great deal. One is sailing, and the

other is cabbage varieties. And about twenty years ago, it occured to

me that every time either sailing or cabbages were discussed in the

mainstream press, the writers got nearly everything wrong.

 

 

 

Well, after a while, I started to wonder why I believed them about

things I didn't know about. I mean, what was the likelihood that they

were conveying accurate, well-researched information on everything but

boats and cabbage? So that's when I stopped relying on journalists'

information as a basis for my business decisions. And I've made a

great deal of money ever since. "

 

So, my Nakeds, do me a favor and think about a subject you really know

by heart--I don't care what it is: your hometown, your favorite breed

of pet, or classic muscle-car engines or ham radio...

 

 

....or a medical condition that you or someone near and dear to you has

battled for a long time--something you have a bone-deep, working

knowledge of.

 

 

 

 

Got it?

 

Now ask yourself... when there's an article on that topic in Time or

Newsweek, or even the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, do

they get it right?

 

Or do you, like me, tend to read those pieces expecting to be

disappointed, and sometimes skip them altogether because even the

headline is idiotic, because it's just such a goddamn drag to read the

fulminations of some J-school grad who skimmed the clips file and/or

gave the topic a desultory Google before banging together a cursory

overview of same by deadline?

 

Yeah, I thought so. Please file that feeling away for a bit.

 

http://www.nakedauthors.com/2008/03/shot-in-dark.html