Because he is riveted to the news, the citizen rejects the truly fundamental problems, remaining attached exclusively to perfectly outmoded and useless terms and images, such as “Right” and “Left,” “capitalism” and “communism,” and really believes that the fundamental political problems are located …

The man who lives in the news … is a man without memory.  Experimentally this can be verified a thousand times over.  The news that excited his passion and agitated the deepest corners of his soul simply disappears.  He is ready for some other agitation, and what excited him yesterday does not stay with him.  This means that the man living in the news no longer has freedom, no longer has the capacity of foresight, no longer has any reference to truth.

      — Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion