Der Gell-Mann-Amnesia-Effekt

 Der "Gell-Mann-Amnesia-Effekt"

bezieht sich auf die Medienrezeption:

Wer sich in einem Fachgebiet gut auskennt, empfindet die Berichterstattung darüber meist als verzerrt, fehlerhaft und verständnislos. Sobald die Person aber mediale Beiträge zu anderen Themen wahrnimmt, verschwindet dieser Eindruck: Das Vertrauen in die journalistische Arbeit ist wieder hergestellt ( deshalb »Amnesia«),

Herkunft

Den Effekt hat der Schriftsteller Michael Crichton in einer Rede von 2002 zum ersten Mal beschrieben. Er bezieht sich dabei auf seinen Freund und Physiker Murray Gell-Mann.

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open a newspaper to some subject you know well....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, end read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the nonsense you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann-Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life:. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus„ which means untruthful in one pattern, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.