CNN.com has an article with the helpful-sounding headline “Things you should know about budget.” But rather than clearly and directly explaining budget basics to CNN readers, the article drives home the fact that the news media fails badly at informing and educating the public.

Keep in mind: this is not a “political analysis” piece, or an article focused on the reception the budget is getting among lawmakers. The whole purpose of this article is ostensibly to give readers the information they need to assess the budget.

So, how does the article fail? Well, for one thing, it makes no effort to indicate how the $3.8 trillion budget breaks down. What portion of that is devoted to defense, to Medicare, to education, etc? CNN doesn't tell us. Take, for example, the article's treatment of the Defense budget:

Defense

To pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama is seeking $33 billion in supplemental funds for this budget year and $159.3 billion for next year's. Funding for military families would increase 3 percent to $8.8 billion. The president would appropriate in advance $50.6 billion for veterans' medical care.

Notice what's missing? That's right -- there's no indication of what total defense spending is.

CNN does, however, point to several drop-in-the-bucket items, such as “End grants to manufacturers of worsted wool. Annual savings: $5 million” and “Terminate Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, aimed at fostering ”new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind." Savings in 2010: $1 million."

The cumulative effect should be obvious: Readers are given a warped picture of the relative amount of spending on defense and things like worsted wool grants.

But that's not nearly as bad as CNN's treatment of taxes. Here's CNN's handling of tax-cuts for wage-earners:

Still a little extra in your paycheck

The Making Work Pay tax breaks would be extended for a year. These were part of last year's stimulus and resulted in slightly higher paychecks for 110 million families, the White House said.

Wow. No mention of the extension of the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. That's weird. But that oversight is made worse by what comes a little later:

Debt reduction

The president's budget would reduce the nation's debt by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Obama would let the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income families, impose a “financial crisis responsibility fee” on large banks and end fossil-fuel tax subsidies for oil, gas and coal companies. Discretionary spending that is not defense-related would get a three-year cap, saving $250 billion over the next 10 years. Read more

Well, what does “high-income families” mean? CNN doesn't say -- and that's a big, big problem, because time and time again, studies have shown that more Americans think they are “rich” or “wealthy” or “high-income” than actually are. In other words, a lot of people who read this article will falsely think Obama is letting their tax cuts expire. (The proposal would only affect individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families making more than $250,000 a year -- about 2 percent of American households.)

Maybe you're wondering if CNN made this clear in that “Read more” link. Even if they did, that wouldn't be adequate -- but they didn't. The link takes you to an article that explains:

Let 2001-2003 tax cuts expire for high-income households: The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire by 2011. As it has promised all along, the Obama administration would like to keep those tax cuts in place for everyone except the highest-income households.

It estimates nearly $700 billion will be raised over 10 years by letting the cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans.

“High-income households” ... “highest-income households” ... “wealthiest Americans”: those are all vague and misleading phrases -- but that's all CNN gives us. It's almost like CNN is deliberately obscuring the fact that only people making more than $200,000 and families making $250,000 will be affected.