It’s unsettling to find that you’ve been lied to. As realization dawns, emotions range from confusion, to shame at having been bamboozled, to anger.

Millions of Americans — particularly those who follow celebrity news and not politics — are feeling this way about the media right now, after a holiday break spent tracking the battle between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.

The “Gell-Mann amnesia effect” describes the tendency we all have to notice errors in news stories about topics we know well, yet to assume trustworthiness when reading articles on topics outside our expertise.

Here’s an example: If you’re a sports fan, you’ll notice it if a writer in your local newspaper doesn’t know the difference between a touchdown and a home run. You’ll realize that the writer (and the editor) have no idea what they’re talking about.

But you’ll likely drop that realization moments later when you turn to the financial pages or to international news, and trust that same paper’s coverage of topics you know less well.

Millions of Americans are suffering from the Gell-Mann amnesia effect when it comes to........

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