We live, we are told, in the Information Age. All the knowledge of humanity is at our fingertips with a mere keystroke. The Internet promise was that we could all be as knowledgable as scholars, knowing everything necessary to make wise decisions and elect wise leaders. A golden age awaited.

And yet here are, less in an age of information and more in an age of misinformation. And disinformation. And conspiracy theories. What happened?

Mainly what happened was that the conveyor of all knowledge does not distinguish between truth and lies, and lies commonly prove the most attractive. Indeed the Internet proved to be a paradise for liars. What more could a liar hope for? The ability to tell any lie and have it distributed world-wide instantaneously. And to do it anonymously, without accountability.

But we can’t blame it all on the Web. The decline in public discourse was abetted by other forces as well. For instance, the conventional means of public communication, broadcasting and newspapers, were undermined by two Conservative legends.

The first was the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher. In 1981, Ms. Thatcher’s Conservatives were trailing badly in the polls and needed a boost. She arranged for one.

At the time, press baron Rupert Murdoch was attempting to acquire control of the Times and Sunday Times newspapers which would give him control of 40 percent of the British press. He would have had to gain permission from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission as he already owned both the biggest-selling daily newspaper, The Sun, and the biggest selling Sunday newspaper, the News of the World. He needed a friend in high places.

He got one. He joined Ms. Thatcher for a quiet Sunday lunch at Chequers, her official country retreat. They staged a coup that, according to the Guardian, “transformed the relationship between British politics and journalism.” The meeting was vehemently denied for 30 years.

Thatcher enabled her guest to ease past the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and noble newspapers that had long cherished their independence became servants of the Murdoch empire. Thatcher, with the bulk of the British Press now firmly in her corner, went on to win two more elections.

The British public did not fare so well. They got a near-monopoly of their press that became increasingly arrogant and sleazy, described by a former Times editor as a “collapse of integrity in British journalism and political life.”

Then Murdoch found another friend, this one on the other side of the Atlantic. American lawmakers, concerned about monopoly control of television by the three main networks, NBC, ABC and CBS, established the Fairness Doctrine. The Doctrine, enforced by the Federal Communications Council (FCC), mandated that broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. The FCC called the doctrine the “single most important requirement of operation in the public interest.”

The doctrine was enforced until the election of Ronald Reagan. The Gipper appointed a new chairman and members to the FCC panel who began rolling back the application of the Doctrine and in 1987 repealed it altogether. Congress attempted to preempt the decision and codify the Doctrine by passing the Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1987, but Reagan vetoed it. Thus ended fairness in broadcasting in the U.S. of A.

One of the more egregious results has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, a broadcasting disgrace that has been as effective in taking journalism and politics into the gutter as Murdoch’s instruments in the UK.

Now we have our very own version of Thatcher and Reagan preparing to trash our mainstream media by “defunding” the CBC. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre promises this at the very time that rampant mis- and dis-information is matched by a hollowing out of the press. Newspapers have shut down by the dozens and journalists laid off by the hundreds.

As for broadcasting, Bell Media butchered CBC’s major rival CTV by cutting 1,300 media jobs in 2023 and terminating 4,800 workers this year. It also cancelled noon news broadcasts on all CTV stations except Toronto, and weekend newscasts on all CTV stations except in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. Poilievre prefers the corporate media to the people’s media, and insists it is doing the job. It isn’t.

A solid majority of Canadians are opposed to “defunding” the CBC, but that may not matter. Neither Thatcher nor Reagan consulted the electorate before undermining their country’s journalism. Poilievre may feel getting a majority in the House of Commons is approval enough.

Never have we needed reliable news more. The benighted politician predicted to be our next prime minister seems determined we will get it less.