Why Are Some Forms of Bad Reporting Badder Than Others?

I’ve asked before, I’ll ask again: why is it so bad for a magazine to print information that is erroneous and/or misleading about Hezbollah gunmen in Lebanon, an issue that barely has any effect on most of its readers, but its no big deal if that same magazine regularly puts out erroneous and/or misleading information about economic issues which does affect most of its readers. Worse, the erroneous and/or misleading information about economic issues affects the rest of us here, because many of that magazine’s readers endlessly repeat the tripe they read at that magazine, and vote accordingly.

Matthew Yglesias makes a similar point.