What’s in a Memory?

I’ve been reading a good bit of cheesy conspiracy theory material recently.
One concept keeps coming up, though, regardless of the legitimacy of the
conspiracy text:

The powerful keep the masses concerned with the trivial so that they won’t
use their numbers to oppose them.

I firmly believe that the powerful do desire this to happen, but I’m not
convinced there’s a concerted effort to bring it about. I think a better
explanation for why we saw so many stories about Anna Nicole Smith last year
is that the our country’s T.V.-watching population is full of shallow,
ignorant people.

They tend not to gather news from alternative news sources. They tend to mix
Indians with Arabs. They tend to be very selfish people with very little
exposure to a world outside of their own, i.e. doing a menial job in an
average way and then coming home to watch T.V. until it’s time for bed.

That’s the cause of poor news coverage, not the evil empire.

I could be wrong, but I see news producers creating their content based on
ratings alone, and most people these days just want to see the trivial,
eye-candy stuff — not real content. They produce what sells, and the cycle
continues.

So, given the facts that the powerful do want to see a dumbed down
population, that most regular, prime-time T.V. watchers are rather
uninterested in politics and global events, which would you say is most
likely for poor news coverage? An evil empire or an ignorant audience?

I say B.

Notes

1. Image from blog.mendeley.com.