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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jmucchiello" data-source="post: 1814043" data-attributes="member: 813">Fact checking in articles is hit and miss. The "Fact" that D&D had a peak in 1980 according to Charles is only true up until recent history. However, the statement that D&D peaked in 1980 was true and you have no way of knowing if the CNN/APA reporter checked that fact with data from today or just found corraborating evidence from 5 years ago that agreed with the "fact".IOW, just because it was said, doesn't mean it was so.I don't know about you but in my experience when I read newspaper articles (or god forbid listen to sound bites on tv news) involving an area of my expertise, 90% of the time there is a "fact" that totally untrue in the reporting. It is obvious that someone is misquoting or making a half-assed summary of something they really don't understand and they write or say something that I know cannot be true. This has happened so many times that I assume when someone in the news is trying to tell me a news story, they have bunged it up somehow. I'm not an expert in a lot of things but if the number of mistakes they make in my fields is so high, it is probably equally high in the fields I am not expert in. Call me cynical if you wish, but I see no reason to believe it only my areas of expertise in which mistakes are made so frequently.</blockquote>