Here’s how it was originally described:

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.

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 part, 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.

“In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say.” — Sadly, this part has been solidly disproven.

I noticed something similar on websites like Reddit. I’ve come across an answer for a question on something I’m well educated on, and their answer is definitively wrong but “sounds correct”. The reddit community will up vote them, and even down vote people who try correcting them.

But then later on I would come across a post on a topic I don’t know, and I’m inclined to believe the answers because they sound right and there’s a group consensus backing it up.