Thursday, September 6, 2012

How very true

This is a phenomenon we are all acquainted with but I was interested to read a pithy summary in R. C. Woodthorpe's The Public School Murder, which was published in 1932. (It was apparently dramatized for the BBC in 1969 as part of the Detective series.)
Mr. Smith thought it strange that Fleet Street should not know the difference between an O.T.C. and a mere cadet corps. But then Mr. Smithy often wondered whether the papers got anything right at all: they were so often wrong on subjects with which he happened to be acquainted. And friends of his who were expert in other subjects, had remarked on the same phenomenon. 
Time has passed and we have many more media outlets than they did in 1932 though, probably fewer newspapers and definitely fewer magazines. But the same interesting phenomenon remains.

3 comments:

  1. That is The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect-see
    http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect.html

    The press has always produced a crappy product,but luckily for them there was no internet to make that obvious to the public.

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  2. What a delightful byway to have ventured down.

    Nowadays, I fear, public schools have generally downgraded their OTCs to a Combined Cadet Corps - nonetheless still doing good work.

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  3. We might have had a massive increase in media outlets but if 90% of them are all controlled by five or six Jewish-owned conglomerates its no surprise they all say pretty much the same thing !

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