Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to agree with you, deeply, but the number of people who fall for simple PR/advertising in today's world suggests otherwise. I think we'd have a chance if they taught PR tricks in schools starting at a young age. Or at minimum, if websites that aggregate news would identify sources that financially benefit from you believing what they're saying.
I've long thought that high school should require at least one course that I like to call "defense against the dark arts" (kids still dig Harry Potter, right? Hahaha). The curriculum would mostly be reasoning, how to spot people lying with graphs and statistics, some rhetoric, and extensive coverage of Cialdini's Influence . The entire focus would be studying, and then learning to spot and resist, tricks, liars, and…
> In the US, 14% of the adult population is at the "below basic" level for prose literacy; 12% are at the "below basic" level for document literacy, and 22% are at that level for quantitative literacy. Only 13% of the population is proficient in each of these three areas—able to compare viewpoints in two editorials; interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical activity; or compute and compare the cost per ounce of food items.
Maybe teaching those skills would increase that 13% but I am not sure by how much.