Adam Curtis, a documentary film-maker and journalist, has a brilliant aptitude at analysis in this area. His work in general, at the intersection of reporting and politics, is pretty excellent.<p>It is some malice, more than you might expect; with with a great dollop of ineptitude, far more than you might expect; that allows this climate of total disorientation to exist.<p>Take some of his thoughts:<p>&gt; &quot;Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events.<p>&gt; &quot;But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.<p>&gt; &quot;And journalism - that used to tell a grand, unfurling narrative - now also just relays disjointed and often wildly contradictory fragments of information.<p>&gt; &quot;Events come and go like waves of a fever. We - and the journalists - live in a state of continual delirium, constantly waiting for the next news event to loom out of the fog - and then disappear again, unexplained.&quot;<p>The rest of that article is here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;adamcurtis&#x2F;entries&#x2F;ae14be85-3104-3c74-a9da-85807434a38e" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;adamcurtis&#x2F;entries&#x2F;ae14be85-3104-...</a><p>And the documentary-film that he&#x27;s referring to in that post, Bitter Lake, is available on iPlayer (for British viewers...or people on a VPN...), here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;iplayer&#x2F;episode&#x2F;p02gyz6b&#x2F;adam-curtis-bitter-lake" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;iplayer&#x2F;episode&#x2F;p02gyz6b&#x2F;adam-curtis-bi...</a>