No news is bad news

For all the angst about polarisation and disinformation, something very different is in fact going on in news consumption: the mass-media age is ending. We’re returning to a time when most people get almost no news. Growing numbers of citizens are oblivious to current affairs, much like most ordinary Britons before the first popular newspaper, the Daily Mail, appeared in 1896. Opinion-formers who lead the political conversation tend to overlook this shift, because they, by definition, care about news. What happens to a society when the majority switches off?

Of course, there never was a golden age when everyone followed the news. George Orwell wrote on May 28 1940, as the British army’s evacuation from Dunkirk began: “People talk a little more of the war, but very little . . . Last night, [his wife Eileen] and I went to the pub to hear the 9[pm] news. The barmaid was not going to have it on if we had not asked her, and to all appearances nobody listened.”