I always joke how people who can see the lies of the past few years (post Trump escalator) still cant see the lies that go back farther, as if THEY just started lying when Trump came onto the political scene
There are actually 2 ideas related to this phenomenon
1. Knolls Law of Media Accuracy
2. Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
effectiviology.com
Its a fairly short article BUT here is the summary
Summary and conclusions
- Knoll’s law of media accuracy is the adage that “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.
- For example, Knoll’s law suggests that someone might watch a news story about an event that they were personally involved with, and notice that the story is full of errors, but then forget that these types of errors exist when watching news stories about other events, with which they’re not as familiar.
- There are various reasons why people display the behavior described by Knoll’s law, including the tendency to assume that perceived authority figures are reliable, an inability to personally verify claims made by the media, and a desire for their preferred source of information to be right, since that would confirm their preexisting beliefs.
- Keeping Knoll’s law in mind can help you assess the reliability of various sources of information, including both traditional media sources, such as newspapers, and non-traditional media sources, such as blogs, as well as alternative sources of information, such as people that you personally know.
- When applying Knoll’s law, it’s important to keep in mind the scope and nature of errors that you encounter, and to remember that, while the presence of errors in one area does make the reliability of a source more questionable, it doesn’t guarantee the presence of errors in other areas.