Who is to blame for the general lack of knowledge and understanding amongst the public that this article and the previous one describes? The author of the first article places some blame at the feet of the Obama administration for their failings in properly “selling” the ACA and educating the public on what is and is not in the legislation. We also see some culpability placed on the ideologues that seem to have become increasingly partisan, irrational, and loud in recent years. Finally, the second article simply holds the general public at fault, citing ignorance and laziness as their primary transgression. After reading these two takes on the current situation, I can’t help but feel there is a major party missing from this discussion: the media. Why is it that there is not more outrage over the fact that a profession whose sole purpose is to inform and educate the public is failing miserably at this task. I disagree with Seth Godin’s view that American’s should be spending more of their free time reading scholarly pieces of non-fiction and drinking organic tea while smoking a pipe and polishing their monocles. People are busy, and in our current state of information dissemination, finding unbiased, fact-based reporting and analysis is extremely difficult and time consuming. Furthermore, while Godin makes the unsubstantiated claim that more Americans are currently being paid to think, I would argue that not everyone has the desire, let alone the wherewithal, read and analyze research articles or entire pieces of legislation such as the ACA. The average citizen has a right to sit down at night, turn on the TV, and get the day’s relevant news and analysis in a concise, accurate, and easy to understand manner. Until there is some accountability for what today passes as journalism, I think we can fully expect the general public to remain uninformed at best and misinformed at worst.
Who is to blame for the general lack of knowledge and understanding amongst the public that this article and the previous one describes? The author of the first article places some blame at the feet of the Obama administration for their failings in properly “selling” the ACA and educating the public on what is and is not in the legislation. We also see some culpability placed on the ideologues that seem to have become increasingly partisan, irrational, and loud in recent years. Finally, the second article simply holds the general public at fault, citing ignorance and laziness as their primary transgression. After reading these two takes on the current situation, I can’t help but feel there is a major party missing from this discussion: the media.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that there is not more outrage over the fact that a profession whose sole purpose is to inform and educate the public is failing miserably at this task. I disagree with Seth Godin’s view that American’s should be spending more of their free time reading scholarly pieces of non-fiction and drinking organic tea while smoking a pipe and polishing their monocles. People are busy, and in our current state of information dissemination, finding unbiased, fact-based reporting and analysis is extremely difficult and time consuming. Furthermore, while Godin makes the unsubstantiated claim that more Americans are currently being paid to think, I would argue that not everyone has the desire, let alone the wherewithal, read and analyze research articles or entire pieces of legislation such as the ACA. The average citizen has a right to sit down at night, turn on the TV, and get the day’s relevant news and analysis in a concise, accurate, and easy to understand manner. Until there is some accountability for what today passes as journalism, I think we can fully expect the general public to remain uninformed at best and misinformed at worst.