Recently I had to type my essay on political ignorance and base on all the stuff I read I can tell political intelligence requires access to knowledge, which is nearly impossible without an active and impartial media. Not that media shouldn't also have opinions, but they should be properly labelled as such.
My local paper used to carry a small box labelled "how they voted," which listed the representatives in government (state and national), the issues which came before them the previous week, and how they voted. It would also list bills coming up. But that is gone now. Even when it existed, the paper never listed issues coming up in one of the dozen or so smaller cities in my county, and rarely listed those in the county seat.
And investigative journalism? It's just gone locally. No broadcast outlet has the time or budget between reading the headlines, telling us about the car accidents or other not-quite-news stories, and the mandatory weather and skiing pet stories.
So why doesn't government tell us? Put it on their web page? The claim that they do. An agenda is published, but not descriptions, not actual text of proposed laws.
Avoiding political ignorance is, quite honestly, just too much work.
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