hereis always a tension, as a journalist, between asking open-endedquestions that allow an interview subject to explain something andpressing or challenging them on accuracy or details. But if you thinkyou already know the subject, or already have a story angle half-formedin your head, it’s easy to overlook the first part.
via The Bias of Veteran Journalists – Culture – The Atlantic | Kate Gardiner.
This perspective of being in a room with reporters who are working and observing how they react to novel information will be part of my sabbatical project.
“The dominant danger [for pundits] remains hubris,the vice of closed-mindedness, of dismissing dissonant possibilities too quickly.” according to U of C Researcher Philip Tutley, as noted in How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
as Tetlock put it, the potential to become”prisoners of our preconceptions.” And that sometimes, even if we thinkwe know the story, it might be worth asking questions as if we don’t.Every now and then, we might hear or learn something that, as long aswe’re open to hearing it, might change our minds about what the realstory is.
