Steven Pinker
On Into the Machine, Tobias Rose-Stockwell (@TobiasRose) and I discuss trust in journalism and common knowledge: Me: The standards that we enjoyed in the earlier era of journalism did not always exist. Most news was fake news. There were stories of babies born talking, speaking Latin; of Martian civilizations; of Bigfoot in the forest; and of fake scandals involving politicians. Tobias Rose-Stockwell: The question I have is: How did that assurance come to be? The New York Times, for instance, emerged as a trusted institution in a time when there were very few trusted institutions. Your average news consumer would go out and see the New York Herald, the New York Times, and another newspaper. One month, the Herald would have a story about animals escaping the Central Park Zoo that did not happen. The New York Times would report on, you know, some business news. The other paper might report on gossip. Month over month, trust was built among these different papers, which eventually became common knowledge: “Oh, you can actually trust this one or that one.” And thus an institution was kind of born in that process.