Investigative Interviewing

Brian Marick writes about the interviewer/interviewee problem:

Dave Liebrech talks about people who are not business experts interviewing people who are. He uses investigative journalism as a model. What struck me most was this:

The interviewee *believes* the interviewer has a perspective different from their own, or has an incomplete understanding of some of the areas.

This brought something else to mind for me - accuracy and what we believe based on what gets reported to us - through any outlet. Think about the last time you say any technical topic being discussed by a reporter (possibly even in the trade press). If it's on TV, radio, or in a general newspaper, it's highly likely that there were many slip ups and factual errors (my friend Mike likes to point to Consumer World reviews in this regard). So when we read these things, we laugh about the inaccuracy - and then move on to reading about subjects we don't know as well without batting an eye.

What the interview thing raised for me is this - just how accurate is the rest of the stuff I read? If the tech journalists can be so far off base, what about about the political, economic (etc.) journalists? Just how much of what they report is being filtered not through bias (about which one can read tons of material) - but through sheer ignorance? It's probably a good idea to look at all journalism with a very, very jaundiced eye...