I think the bigger question in a lot of human centric things is the "why" -- why did that head of state say that thing? Why does this company avoid that regulation? Why do people complain when this tax credit goes away? It's not reasonable to stop with the "what" in many situations. Or alternatively, the comparison to physics should be an article saying that the what is the spin of a single electron in an experiment, even though the experiment is about gravity -- missing the point entirely.

And backtracking slightly to my grandparent comment, Gell-Mann was coined by Michael Creighton who in the same quote compared Murray Gell-Mann's knowledge of physics to Creighton's knowledge of show business. The "what you know well enough to spot errors" can be anything as can the "what you blindly trust the reporter on out of your own ignorance."