I have a corollary to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

For those who do not know it, Michael Crighton put it as follows:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

If you can restate that as The media is just as likely to be inaccurate about the things that you’re personally not familiar with as it is about the things that you are familiar with, then here is my corollary: The media is just as likely to deliberately try to make Republicans look bad to conservatives as it would try to make conservatives look bad to everybody else.

The rest of this was a lecture – and not an interesting one, either.  So I will spare you it.

Moe Lane

9 thoughts on “I have a corollary to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.”

  1. Aw, c’mon Moe … Which particular instance of this phenomenon sparked your observation? Inquiring minds want to know!

  2. “You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.”
    .
    This includes 9/10 articles on the Ukraine and Russia.

  3. Hmm. Does RedState count as media? The more I read, the worse I feel about the GOP in general.

    1. Which is odd, because RedState is a Republican site, not a conservative one. Which is why I stopped posting/hanging out there, and just scan the headlines occasionally.

      1. I stopped hanging out there because Erik Erickson was the leading advocate of the ‘Romney is inevitable, he must be stopped!’ nonsense that did nothing except make the eventual nominee (who they agreed was inevitable) unacceptable to the more hardcore elements of the Republican base (who are the same folks who provide a disproportionate share of the ‘boots on the ground’).

  4. Breitbart does this a lot. No really I think that’s their goal from now on.

  5. The corollary of the corollary:
    Republicans are spineless crapweasels who have a long track record of selling out Conservatives.
    Therefore, when the media deliberate trying to make Republicans look bad to Conservatives, their best opportunity for doing so involves little more than finding a Republican who is openly talking about betraying the Conservatives, and truthfully reporting what he says.

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