Discussion: The Assault on Reason

I started this page to foster a discussion about Gore's The Assault on Reason. In particular, I would like to discuss the following: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the next President of the United States makes it their goal to repair the national discourse, to address the problems outlined in Assault. Specific goals might include: restoring the integrity of the major news networks, re-establishing governmental oversight by the press, and encouraging the sort of reasoned, calm, and honest discussion we used to expect in America's newspapers and "talking head" news and debate shows. How can this hypothetical President make this happen, while staying within the framework of the Constitution?

In particular, I would encourage comments on any of the following questions:

1. What specific steps would the next President need to take in order to reverse the last eight years of uninquisitive reporters, secrecy in government, and corporate media dominance?
2. How can the next President engage the senate and the judiciary in this prcoess? The American people? Academia? The media outlets themselves?
3. Related to the previous question, what can we do as a nation to sustain a national discussion about the quality of the press (of the sort attempted here)? How do we overcome the inevitable paradox that we presently depend on corporate media sources to host national discourse, and that they have little interest in hosting discussions critical of their practices?
   
4. How does we responsibly address the conflict between freedom of the press and regulation of those corporations controlling the press? For example, how can we precisely codify and regulate the wreckless and dishonest, yet ultimately quite subtle, tactics of distortion available to media pundits? How can we encourage honest reporting objectively, that is, without relying upon an individual judge performing case by case analyses, which may be subject to corruption?
5. Failing this, how can we as consumers filter out the garbage discussion from the actual discussion? For instance, how can we know when to trust the validity of factual assertions made in a newspaper article or blog? How can these be verified?
6. How can we re-establish market incentives for media outlets to produce quality reporting, subject to traditional ethical standards of journalism, such as source-citing, fact-checking, etc?
   

Let me leave the list of questions at this for now. Feel free to add your own questions as they come to you, and of course to answer the questions I have posed here, as you see it.