Sometimes I wonder how Americans can be so willfully uninformed. Then a comedian like Jon Stewart takes a snippet of news and in one simple comedic analysis of the real analysis of an event, it becomes completely evident why.
Many of us Liberals and Progressives like to blame mostly the Right Wing Echo Chamber of FoxNews and Right Wing Talk Radio for leading the misinformation campaign. While this is true we must also put some of the blame where it belongs. We have a rather lazy and inept mainstream news media. They seem to invest disproportionately on entertainment stories like the Cindy Lohan story and other entertainment stories while lacking depth in stories that materially affect most citizens.
It is for this reason that healthcare reform, financial reform, and many other important laws were so misunderstood. Said misunderstanding led to poor legislation that negatively affected the middle class while transferring more of middle class wealth to the wealthy.
So what is the solution? Those looking for news from “reputable sources” must redefine who constitutes the “reputable news resources”. The new news resources must be time tested independent bloggers that have earned that right with accurate information. Mainstream media’s analysis is generally corporate biased and shallow and must no longer be trusted.