Junk food news

One way the media helps authoritarians prevent individual thought and initiative is to distract the people with useless "junk food" news, like human interest stories.

For example, in 1996 we the people were enlightened by such information as:

-Dutchess Sarah Ferguson's financial difficulties and autobiography

-Baseball player Roberto Alomar, who spat on an umpire

-Michael Jackson's divorce and remarriage

-Madonna's pregnancy in glorious detail: for example, we were informed that in her fourth month she craved poached eggs...

-Diana's divorce and financial settlement (especially sickening when you consider her upcoming death)

-the Macarena dance craze

-OJ Simpson, who was already without a doubt the most over-reported story of 1995

-2300 stories about the horror of the Canadian deficit (New Zealand used to have stories like this)

-"Cyberporn" basically Mcarthyist hysteria about why the internet must be censored

-Inconclusive evidence of billion-year old dead bacteria from Mars.

Winter says this is "McNews. News Lite. They're filling the newspapers and broadcasts with it, and the notion of an informed citizenry and democracy itself is suffering as a result." (For example, the Globe and Mail ran three stories (on pages 8, 12 and 13) throughout the entire year of 1995 about a bill in congress that would weaken US anti-pollution policies, which effects the health of Canadians. Compare that to nearly 500 times as much about the (imaginary) deficit!)

Especially ironic is that these examples are from Canadian newspapers, though only one has anything to do with Canada - and that's about the deficit, which suggests that government services, such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which provides Canadian news and content, should be cut.

Interesting, considering that the CBC is a competitor to newspapers...