“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

I was first mentioned at a very young age in a newspaper when Der Spiegel reported on my dad. What it mentioned was that he had two children, my sister and myself. It then stated our ages, and got both of them completely wrong. This is not hard. It's also not important, but if it's not important enough to get right, maybe it's not important enough to simply make up?

And later, I discovered the effect Michael mentions: every time they reported on anything I knew even a little about, they got it comically wrong. Except I don't suffer from amnesia.

UPDATE: the only news source that I've found the be reasonably reliable over time is The Economist, if you ignore them on executive compensation ("our valued readers and sponsors: everything is fine with your outrageous salaries") and GMOs.