I think that you have too much faith in information and .
in education
BREXIT is now raw gut; because the will of the people; because we won. Do you really believe you that we can convince the "beast" that they have been misled and are wrong?
And would you ban tabloids and call-in radio shows?
Would you silence Brexiter politicians?
You may be correct to assume that 'information and education' won't be sufficient given that nowdays many are determined 'believers' in nonsense and not open to real data, etc. But I hope you are wrong and they may be a valuable way to combat conflated ignorance.
No, I'd not 'ban' tabloids. But I would ensure a wider remit and enforcement on the application of the kinds of rules which have applied for years during general elections wrt propaganda. The key weakness here in recent years hasn't been the printed media. It has been the 'weaponisation' of farcebook, twitter, etc. i.e. paying both 'net' companies and others like Cambridge Analytica to generate floods of b00l0x targeted to trigger the biases of individuals, out of sight of others. That exploited the data-collection which the big media companies have hoovered up on their millions of users.
Such 'messages' should be scrutinisable by the same people who oversee the approval of ads and material paid for by parties, or banned if they don't come from a registered party in the UK. Allowing troll factories and falsehood farms paid for by Putin or the alt-right is the problem we need to address.
One change I would like to see if for mainstream media like the BBC to switch focus from simply reporting all events as 'News' towards searching out and debinking the c00blers issued via farcebook, twitter, etc. It would also probably help if the BBC put more effort into exposing where the funding for all the politicians and their shills came from. All too often it is weathly people outwith the UK. All too often the politicians, tabliod editors, etc, also dodge tax and keep their wealth outside the UK, hide it via shell companies, etc. In a democracy exposure of this really should be as routine on the BBC as it is in PE. So where is it?
In effect, 'bad guys' have been using these net mechanisms against us, and against democracy. That's something we can *all* raise as an issue and seek to challenge or debunk, and demand that Government also do so.
Politicians can say what they choose. But the challenge then needs to be more that the shallow bickering on 'Today' or 'Question Time'. It requires factually and rationally based dissection at length being widely available.
It may be that none of this works. But given the alternative, it seems worth trying. I tend to think that sunlight is the best disinfectant. But people do need to see it.
