This is huge, and if you're interested in an issue, these days it's often not all that difficult. The conceit that you can "get informed" by just reading curren

This is huge, and if you're interested in an issue, these days it's often not all that difficult. The conceit that you can "get informed" by just reading current news is just plain false, and probably has been for as long as there have been newspapers. These days, we have Wikipedia and the websites of trade journals and magazines of many stripes, and lots of good bloggers, where you can go for backgrounders on a lot of topics which are relevant to public policy. There's often bias, but it's easy to read past that -- read a couple of essays from various viewpoints, read a few other essays by the same authors to get a sense of their level of hysteria, and hey presto, you've got a deeper understanding. Of course, you do have to put in the time, and you won't be able to do it for every trending topic, but you can do a hell of a lot better than all the news sites put together.