Democracy depends on a free, open and accurate press. Today in America, we have a closed, incompetent press. A recent example makes this clear. A NY State surcharge tax on the wealthy was up for debate in their budget. Doing a google search on the topic resulted in articles that either had no facts in them, just opinions, or facts that were wrong. Even the greate NY times had an article that had totally inaccurate facts on what this surcharge was. It was basically 1% of adusted gross income above $200K for single and $300k for joint filers. So a family earning $350 would pay $500 more. The NY times said they would pay $3500 more. Missing the whole concept of marginal tax rates. I found this out by an article inTruthDig. Now, I could not confirm this is the way the tax surcharge works because no article had the facts.
How could citizens form opinions and judge their representatives when they have no or wrong facts?