Let me preface this post with some facts about myself. I get about 40% of my news from the BBC 50% from NPR and 10% from PBS. These seem to me to offer the best coverage, and I am sick of all of the other news outlets. In large part, people take things at face value, so they think that what they see is what they get. If the news is reporting on Brittney, people think that that must be what's going on in the world. As much as I love them, it's sad that most people my age get their news from The Colbert Report and The Daily Show (great as they are at satire) - not that 'real news', like Fox news, is any better.
This is where I think that a good English teacher can come in. If a student knows how and why it is important to be an informed citizen, then they may make that effort. If they learn to see beyond what is being said, and to look at how it's being said, they may be discerning enough to understand that most news in this country is a joke.
It isn't just that we don't get the news that we should, it's that most of us wouldn't know what to do with that information. A good teacher would help in that area as well. This trend is probably a fact of modern American life, but a good teacher will help against that - will help the individual to overcome it.
