“Now...this” is a phrase commonly used on television newscast to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase acknowledges that the world as mapped by television news has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. No earthquake is so devastating , no political blunder so costly, that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying " Now this." Interrupted by commercials, presented by newscasters with celebrity status, and advertised like any other product, television newscasts transmit news without context, without consequences, without values, and therefore without essential seriousness; in short, news as pure entertainment. The resulting trivialization of information leaves television viewers well entertained, but not well informed or well prepared to respond to events. The spicies of information created by television is, in fact, “disinformation” Disinformation does not mean false information, but misleading information—misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented, or superficial information-that creates the illusion of knowing something, but that actually leads one away from any true understanding. In the United States, television news does not deliberately aim to deprive viewers of a coherent understanding of their world. But when news is packaged as entertainment, no such understanding is possible. The problem is not that television viewers lack authentic information, but that they are losing their sense of what a complete body of information should include. People are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the world of television news – a world of fragments, where events stand alone, stripped of nay connection to the past, future, or other events—that all principles of coherence have vanished. And so has the notion of holding leaders accountable for contradicitions in their policies. What possible interest could there be in comparing what the President says now and what the President said in the past? Such a comparision would merely put old news into a new form and could hardly be interesting or entertaining. For all his great insight, George Orwell did not predict this situation; it is not “Orwellilan.” The government does not control the newscasts. Lies have not been defined as truth, nor truth lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and has beeen entertained into indifference. The current situation fits the predictions of Aldous Huxley, an English novelist and essayist, rahter than those of Orwell: Huxley realized that the government need not conceal anything from a public that has become insensible to contradiction, that has lost any perspective from which to scrutinize government critically, and that has been rendered passive by technology diversions.