Don't make me go all Claude Shannon on you! I was part ranting, but I do actually think a lot of the issues in the colloquial sense can be thought of in an information theoretic framework / I don't believe I'm conflating the two. I think one can abstract a lot of problems to a source, a sink, and a channel (or some network/combination of them), although in a lot of real-world cases, it would just be really tough to come up with the analytical model.

History goes beyond known facts. In history, many times the victors either lie about historical facts (e.g. extreme example being North Korea) or frame them in a way that is positive to the victors. Sometimes, when the real truth comes to light (there was an error), this can set a system back. One could say actual history/truth (sources) communicate over some channel (teachers, history books, etc.) to people (sinks). In this case, a "transmission" error can actually have dire consequences. One recent such example is what's happening in Ireland with politician Gerry Adams (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=309713893), where stuff about Gerry Adam's past coming to light (re~murder/kidnapping) are raising a bit of a controversy as he was a major player in the peace process between Ireland and Britain.

Another example: education. You could say that how things are classically taught are suboptimal, where a teacher is relaying information to students above their channel capacity (40 straight minutes, no breaks, etc.). Systems like Coursera/Kahn Academy help to reduce the transmission rate (e.g. presenting information in bite sized chunks, allow for speed playback control), which in some sense act as an adaptive optimization for what our brains can handle/unit time.