I read an article written by Andrew Romano, for News Week, which discussed in detail the American public's ignorance of political affairs. This article was largely inspired by a News Week survey of the public, testing it with standardized questions given in the citizenship exam. After reading that a large number of Americans failed this exam, I decided to take it myself. Once I completed the exam, which I failed miserably, I remembered a comment Romano made in his article about the population being immigrants who are uneducated or don't speak English. Being a college student, this comment is a little hard to digest, especially after doing so poorly on the exam myself. I don't consider myself a genius but I am educated and certainly not an immigrant who doesn't speak English. In the article, Romano comments on how the percentage of people passing would be higher if the exam were limited to more educated people. While this comment is true to some extent, I believe that even the most educated citizens would still have problems with the exam and uninformed decision making for the same reason that uneducated people have problems with it, namely media coverage . Today's society is a media society. , rich or poor, educated or uneducated, we all receive information and news in the same way. Through television, radio, the Internet or newspapers we absorb information and, whether we like it or not, this information is distorted and controlled. The media seems to follow what Americans want to see, and Americans want to see celebrity news, international news, or anything else that doesn't have to do with political information. This lack of coverage, of real issues, on both sides is the real culprit for the lack of political knowledge in the United States… middle of paper… around the world. In a short time with the right people, my eyes were opened to how the media influences our lives and pushes people to make a certain decision. Now more than ever I believe that corruption in the news industry and their control over the information presented is severely hindering the national political education that is taking place in the United States. Letting these industry leaders distort our opinions for their own personal gain and pitting lower class families against their own interests is not the way the media industry was meant to be. It was meant to be an outlet to inform the masses of events and decisions that might affect their lives so they could use the information to determine how to handle the matter. This is no longer the case. Corporate greed has turned it into an industry with ulterior motives that must be changed.