Why do academics lack the ability to apply their academic methods to news items?

As I follow the responce of Katrina on academic lists, I am shocked by the fact that so called scholars fail to employ elemental methods, such as source criticism, let alone a general thoughtfulness. As I learned various methods of seperating reliable from unreliable information, the historical method, the scientific method, the quantitative method, and so on, I regarded these as useful for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable information. Apparently, this is not typical. It seems that not only do many academics only apply their method to their narrow field, and use wishful thinking for everything else, but most other academics don't seem bothered enough to call them on it.