When people believe in ghosts, why the surprise at fake news?

As 2016 gradually fades away a host of pundits are giving their opinions about the events that took place this year. Regardless of their political views all agree that the peoples of the world are angry with politicians, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and people are no longer listening to reason, a town in Macedonia has got rich by publishing fake news. Anil Padmanabhan writes that a physicist, named David Bohm discovered some 5 decades back that we have stopped listening to each other. "Just scroll through the myriad WhatsApp dysfunctional groups you subscribe to and figure for yourself how there is now little distinction between fact and fiction or news and views..," he writes. Pundits seem to live in some other world. Vast numbers of people believe in God even if no one has seen Him or Her. People also believe in ghosts. If people did listen to each other why would there be so many divorces? In the US about 50% of marriages end in divorce, the rate in India is lower, but growing fast. The lower rate in India could be partly due to the very low rate of employment among women. In the 18th century Rev Thomas Bayes wrote his theorem which shows that people use the same set of figures to arrive at opposite opinions. Anklesaria Aiyar is contemptuous about the way people are voting for right wing parties. "When things don't improve despite changes in government, the veneer of civilization peels off and dark passions blow to the surface," he writes."Surly voters take refuge in conspiracy theories, blaming all ills on foreigners, immigrants, ivory-tower experts, minorities and other hate objects." As an "ivory-tower expert" himself he should ask why. Are Germans wrong to blame the Angela Merkel government for the Berlin attack? The killer, Anis Amri was both an illegal immigrant and a minority. One year back 130 people died in terrorist attacks on Paris. In January of last year, after the Charlie Hebdo killings, Israelis offered a software which would mine all the data and point to terrorist cells most likely to mount lethal attacks. The French refused. It is a good thing that Francois Hollande is not standing for reelection, he will be trounced. When the left wing Politico publishes a piece on how Obama manipulates the news what are people going to believe? When the mainstream media abuse voters as a "Confederacy of Dunces" and calls them "racists, xenophobic" they have a right to be angry. Today all the news is concentrated on suffering of people in Aleppo, with not one report about what is happening in Mosul when the US has killed more than a quarter of million in Iraq already. Before pouring scorn on people the pundits must examine what they write. Maybe they will understand why we are so angry.