Years ago a friend introduced me to this approach with news from the Middle East and it was an eye-opener. And because this time we have no priors, we don't think to really question it.Ī fun experiment to try at home is to read the news about a foreign region in your favourite news outlet, then find the local media covering the same stories. But then we turn the page or click the next link and read about something else. The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect refers to those moments when we read something and notice that it's not really reliable because we happen to have some prior insight into the issue. It sounds like one of those cool insights into human cognition gleaned by scientists but it's actually just a funky name that was chosen to label something we all do by an author giving a speech once. Over the past week I kept thinking about the 'Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect'. (Also, see the Rarely Certain piece about news blind spots ). It's the quality that colours it as a consumer product designed to stimulate or please rather than inform. But there's another, arguably equally insidious, quality to news, which would possibly surprise anyone who has never worked in the field. We all think we know the biases that shape news and current affairs, but typically we think of them as ideologically-oriented. And British people love to recapitulate all the times Britain beat France at war and then eventually saved them in a bigger war. I didn't really appreciate this until I lived here. French people do love to look down on Britain. It's that two quite different stories are being told to suit distinct audiences. The point here isn't that the media on one side is factually incorrect while the other is telling it like it is. In the early days of this mess the French Foreign Minister brushed Britain off as 'the third wheel' and limited his analysis of Britain's role with the remark 'we know their constant opportunism.so there is no need to bring our ambassador back to explain'. The suggested insignificance here of Britain was cheekily underlined by the continued presence of the French ambassador in London, while the ones in Canberra and Washington were recalled. In French media I see Britain described as a bit part player in a dispute between France on one side and Australia and Joe Biden (they've likened him to Trump, over here) on the other. It's also been quite obviously shaped by UK media so that a large component in the drama is about Britain yet again in France's crosshairs and the good old 'best of enemies' being at it again. And how much of a penalty Australia is going to have to pay the company 20 minutes down the road from me. This is why UK media has focused so much on government ministers and other political figures commenting on it, rather than the substance of the matter strategic allies falling out over a big contract and whether these particular submarines were or weren't the best approach to holding China at bay in a far away region.
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