I wouldn't know about Fox being as bad as CNN, to say nothing of Comedy Central. (I have complained about Jon Stewart's "serious when I wanna be"/"clown nose on - clown nose off" persona elsewhere; suffice it to say for now that he's an irresponsible prick, and a major contributor to political illiteracy.) Fox has yet to be caught sucking up to some foreign dictator, as CNN did, and tends to have a lot more liberal pundits around than CNN has conservatives. This is all second-hand news, mind you; I don't actually watch Fox or any of the other broadcast networks.

Your criticism of the education system is one I heard constantly during my years in ed school, but as far as I could tell from my own kids' experience and what I see in the news/blogosphere, the public schools are every bit as crappy at teaching the facts as they are at teaching critical thinking. So they're not really doing *anything* well, especially the urban school districts.