Interesting that this was written in 1953

The general ignorance of domestic and foreign problems may be no greater today than In the past, but it is complicated for us by one new factor.  Everyone reads digests, sees films, listens to radio commentators: so that people have an illusion that they know everything, whereas they have only heard of everything.  Not only that. They have views about things on which they lack the elements of knowledge – not their own views, but acquired from some convincing writer or speaker.  They have lent their ears, perhaps to a politician of a camp opposed to [the other political party in power], who may be honest and competent but who certainly wants to get [the other political party] out and himself in.  Or to a publicist – a writer of books or a radio commentator – and he is probably honest, he is not likely to be competent (since the nature of his work allows neither for the study of fundamentals nor for the practical handling of public affairs which combine to produce competence), and in any event he is driven by necessity, imperious beyond all other, of being interesting: for this is his living.

– Frank Sheed, Society and sanity (1953) p. 204