NATIONAL INCOME- Unscrambling Regional Disparities

January 17, 1981 feeding of society with printed and other media. There may be no need for day-to-day government control of the content, since the scope of independent news gathering and its publication will further shrink. Unable to sustain their own channels of effective communication, dissident or alternative views will fail to gain a significant foothold in the mainstream of commercial media. Given the insistent pressure to conform from the government, there is a tendency for the press to avoid controversial issues which question the legitimacy of the government, and to draw instead on the values and assump- NATIONAL INCOME tions which are most familiar and most widely legitimated