I could not disagree more with Washington Post reporter Perry Bacon's statements during an online Q&A today that the media gets too much blame for the public's lack of understanding of politics and policy. Here's Bacon:

I'm going to suggest another group that deserves some blame: the public. Americans spend a lot of time shopping for cars, in line for I-pads, etc. But the number of people who don't know who the chief justice of the Supreme Court is or the name of their member of Congress is really high. Politicians, I would say this on both sides, wouldn't make so many misleading claims if they knew voters would bother to check them out. There is more information out there than ever, not only articles like what we do in the Post, but factcheck.org and cites like that, where you can verify claims. That people believe misleading things suggests A. they don't want the facts or B. they aren't interested in looking them up.

Later, Bacon added:

I do worry we pin too much of the blame on politicians and the press to almost force people to learn more about politics, but I think for most Americans, politics is something they are occasionally interested in.

That's a little garbled, but in context, it is clear that Bacon is saying “politicians and the press” receive too much blame for the public's lack of knowledge about politics.

The fact that “there is more information out there than ever” is all the more reason why people need the media to sort through that information and make some basic determinations about what is true, what is false, what is meaningful, and what is not. Bacon is missing a jaw-droppingly obvious Option C: Most people have neither the time nor the expertise required to sort through complex claims and counter-claims about public policy.

It's all well and good for a Perry Bacon to say the information is out there, people should go find it. But Perry Bacon is a political reporter for the Washington Post -- it's his job to know where to find that information and what it means. That is not the case for an accountant in Omaha or a math teacher in San Antonio or a construction worker in Pittsburgh. They don't have the time or the resources or the expertise to do so. Frankly, it's an amazingly elitist attitude for Bacon to assume that because he (a person who gets paid to do things like visit “factcheck.org and cites [sic] like that”) has time to check out false claims, so does a single mother working a retail job. You have to be incredibly out of touch to think, as a political reporter whose job it is to research these things, that everyone else has the time and ability to do so, too. To think that readers should be able to -- and should have to -- go figure out on their own whether Barack Obama is Muslim, for example. (He isn't.)

What does Bacon think people do when they “spend a lot of time shopping for cars” and iPads? They seek guidance from people who have expertise about cars and electronics -- friends, relatives, and media like Consumer Reports. That's what Perry Bacon and the Washington Post should be when people need information about health care reform and tax policy -- a resource people can rely on, like Consumer Reports or PC World or whatever. That's what the public needs. (And, for the millionth time, doing it once is not enough.)

And if that isn't what Perry Bacon and the Washington Post think their role in the world is, I have to wonder: What would they say they do here? What value do they bring their readers, if not a solid understanding of important issues?