(March 11, 2014 at 11:37 am)Bad Wolf Wrote: Why is that? Why bring in a priest? What possible expertise can a priest offer unless the subject is actually on religion?It depends on the story being covered and the community it is being pitched to. That, and the fact that many people simply accept that the people being interviewed are experts, whether or not they really are. I'm less concerned with them bringing on a religious figure since I generally know what to expect from them (or do we expect some brand-new insight from the guy whose guidebook is 2,000 years old?). I would be more concerned with Mr. John Doe, Chief of Engineering at J. Doe Associates, who might be the only employee of J. Doe Associates and thinks that having a degree from DeVry makes him an expert.
For all practical purposes, the way that news shows use "experts" is more about building a narrative than it is about helping us understand anything about the story.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
