Half a century ago, the most important question in US-American politics was ‘What did the President know, and when did he know it?’ Today, with even that level of political accountability a distant memory, an important question for citizens of all countries to ask is ‘What do I need to know, and when do I need to know it?’. The experience of the last few weeks illustrates an almost timeless problem in the interaction between information and democracy: information is not distributed according to need.
