Political economy of the media and consumer perceptions of biotechnology

Although households are delugeed with information through dozens of TV channels, sufficiency of newspapers, journals, and radio, the public is said to be poorly informed upon many important issues. For example, European consumer resist genetically modified (GM) foods--despite scientists and official institutions claiming those proceedss are safe. These reactions are blamed upon consumers being poorly informed.

There is an extensive literature upon imperfect information (see Akerlof, Stiglitz). An important implicit assumption in this literature is that of the like kind information problems may be solv through providing more information. The enigma is that information provision is assumed to be neutral. However, in