Have you read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) - well worth reading and rereading. The theme of it in a way is "that people do not know objective truth,

Have you read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) - well worth reading and rereading. The theme of it in a way is "that people do not know objective truth, and can be fooled by propaganda" It's about things he observed in WWI, the role of the media, the failure of the media, the start of the propaganda age.. My point is - none of these problems are new. Lippmann was writing about very similar problems 100 years ago. (In that and his other early books, e.g. Liberty and the News - on how somehow, we don't require journalists be qualified, although they have such a vital role in democracy.) It's hard to think that democracy is possible, given these problems. (Saward in his Democracy says that Schumpeter in the mid-20th C simply redefined 'democracy' as 'whatever they now have in countries we call democratic', thus avoiding the worrying about democracy that produced the fascinating books of the early 20th C on problems with it. e.g. Lippmann's, Michels' Political Parties)