Extrapolation From Mainstream Comics Articles

You ever notice that when a mainstream outlet writes a story about comics, they get things wrong? I mean, setting aside the (fortunately decreasing instances of) "Bif! Pow! Wham!" titles and the urban legends that have been propogating for years (almost anything said by Bob Kane, for example). They might cite Stan Lee as the artist who drew Spider-Man or that Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe SChuster or that Diamond isn't a monopoly. Generally, those errors are kind of tangental to their article's broader point, but you still cringe that somebody out there -- probably several somebodies -- are going to read that and get this wrong idea embedded in their head.

And you're pretty sure that the writer wasn't trying to mislead people, just that s/he didn't get the facts straight. Maybe they were going off something somebody mis-spoke in casual conversation, maybe they did their research on a hacked Wikipedia page, maybe their fingers were just typing in concert with what they were thinking. (Don't laugh. I've done that plenty of times!)

You can't really blame them. Part of a journalist's job, after all, is to report on all kinds of things. They can't be experts at everything, so they have to do research (usually quickly) and are prone to getting things garfed up from time to time.

Makes you wonder what they get wrong in OTHER articles, though, doesn't it? Makes you wonder what bad ideas you're carrying around in your head because a journalist got something wrong.

Just something to think about.

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