Orac's got the story. It seems Keith Olbermann let himself get played by the antivaxxers. He let his hatred for Rupert Murdoch override any critical thought he might have had. I liked some gems of his I saw on YouTube, which were generally limited to denouncing obvious evils, but if he's so vulnerable to genetic fallacies, I think I'll be ignoring him from now on.This antivaxxer manufactroversy is a science matter. You go with scientific consensus and use the scientific method to debate it if you want to know what's really going on. There's no other rational way to look at it. It doesn't particularly matter what other journalists say on the matter, unless they've really looked at the matter scientifically.
So, unless Olbermann really shapes up and admit the full depth of this failure, I think I'd be inclined to favor something like Orac's view. This story makes him into another Bill O'Reilly, only in a different spot on the political spectrum.
4 comments:
Agreed, I'm not a big fan of Olbermann anyways. He's just a liberal response to Bill O'Reilly that plays to the crowds under the guise of entertainer. There are plenty of more thoughtful journalists out there that should get primetime shows, unfortunately they don't bring in the money.
Meh. So he's not 100% correct on everything. That puts him in the league of a Francis Collins or a Christopher Hitchens. So what if he's another Bill Maher? Yes, he's a moron on vaccination, but we shouldn't let our quest for the perfect trample the good we already have.
The solution is simple, and universal - praise journalists/politicians/pundits when they're right, and criticize them when they're wrong.
Part of the problem is the why of his choice. He's revealed himself to be more enthusiastic about taking down Rupert Murdoch than about disseminating truth. That's what's wrong: all it took to shut down critical thinking was the chance to attack his opponents.
My biggest problem with him is that he's just another entertainer disguised as a journalist. We don't need more of those people. They are rhetoric over substance. Sure there may be substance there, but to their viewers that isn't the important thing.
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