““The provision of news and information, for example, has been ‘dumbed down’ to a previously unimaginable degree, and the line between Hollywood fiction and journalistic fact is increasingly blurry. Between the latest action blockbuster and a Fox News ‘embedded’ exclusive – or, at an ‘advanced’ level, between some sentimental Oscar-bait and a John Simpson BBC news report – locating the line is no easy task.20 In search of the facts, sceptical and curious citizens turn to the web for scraps of truth, and struggle to separate the journalistic wheat from the chaff. But their eagerness to educate themselves and their hostility to the mainstream, corporate- and state-owned media assures us that the rational pursuit of objective reality hasn’t been forsaken in a world of hyper-propaganda and philosophical relativism.””
