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>I'm convinced this is some throwaway joke—I believe zero intelligent thought went into this "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You o
by dabluecaboose 3y ago
>I'm convinced this is some throwaway joke—I believe zero intelligent thought went into this
"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."
-Michael Crichton
- cyanydeez 3y agothere's still strong points and week points in journalism and journalists. science and tech journalism are definitely less likely to tell a compelling story with the existing facts and coherently. what's more likely happening is dumbing down certain expert information to the perceived idiots.
- caseysoftware 3y ago> * science and tech journalism are definitely less likely to tell a compelling story with the existing facts and coherently.* Why do you believe this is limited to these two areas?
- actinium226 3y agoBecause science and tech journalism requires a certain knowledge of science and technology, but people who want to go into journalism generally don't study those topics and aren't interested in them.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoScience journalists often do have a scientific background, like Ed Yong for example (MPhil Biochemistry).
- actinium226 3y agoThere are some great ones out there, particularly at ArsTechnica, but there are also journalists working at mainstream newspapers who are sent/told to cover some tech/science thing and presumably they do their best but they end up out of their depth and just put something together to meet the deadline.
- caseysoftware 3y ago^ This. My wife was a high level reporter in DC covering the White House and even traveling with POTUS at times (locally via motorcade, never on Air Force One). I can't count the number of times she'd call and say "I have a 3pm deadline.. what do you know about X?" The number of reporters who have special training or specific background within a beat are exceptionally small. They're there but they are NOT the norm.
- est31 3y agoI have seen some political journalism first hand (in a micro cosm, not the big world stage) and I saw how wrong journalists can get details sometimes. That was even without assuming a bias of the journalists involved, which is more often present than not.