Hah, you can't try to sneak out of this using the tangential Gell-Mann lifeline. You said something along the lines of 'Hard to call it idle cynicism and incuriosity because [overt expression of idle cynicism and incuriosity]'. That's plainly silly.
As to this 'effect' itself, I've always found it strange it's given the weight and consideration that it sometimes is. I'm no Crichtonoscopist and I've never seen the full text of his remarks but given it was a bit in a speech delivered at the "International Leadership Forum" and arrives at the conclusion media is useless, I'm guessing it wasn't meant entirely seriously. It's a little amusing anecdote and morsel for thought in a talk - not some expression of deep insight and hard-hitting media criticism. If someone had come up with it on HN, there'd be legions of black-belt logicians leaping in to check off the fallacies (appeal to authority? confirmation bias? the dreaded 'anecdata'? plain old vanity? it's got it all).
I don't see how that's a silly thing to argue. Or maybe, what's actually argued is something slightly different. You don't just call "Gell-Mann Amnesia" upon spotting a simple jargon mistake and call all news bullshit. But people have different expertise. You, me and others here know our CS; many of us also know our maths & physics, and derived specializations ranging from batteries to rocketry. We can routinely spot nonsense in news stories within those domains. Then, we all have friends who are knowledgeable in other areas. Myself, I have a historian in my circle, whose pastime is debunking nonsense written within his field of expertise. If you ask around, between yourself and your friends, you can spot the same reporting problems emerging across many domains. A pattern emerges.
That's not to say that good journalism doesn't exist. I maintain that good stories, and good journalists, are few and far between. You may read a solid, trustworthy[0] report on an important topic every year. Or every month, if you're good at curating your news experience. But these good stories are not what majority of people read most of the time; using them as defense of modern journalism is just plain motte-and-bailey. Regular people read regular news, with clickbait headlines, bad reporting, lowest-effort articles and no attempt at being accurate.
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[0] - But then, if it's not in your field, is it trustworthy or just good sounding? How can you tell?