This tends to apply to movies more than to television, but one unfortunate way in which ideology is forced onto public consciousness is an undermining of learned authority. There are a number of movies (disaster movies, horror movies, thrillers, political movies) in which the "expert" in a field is shown to be wrong while the young protagonist, the kid, or the hero with common-sense know-how is shown to be right.
From that kind of representation, it adds to an all-too-prevalent viewpoint that knowledge is something to shun, that university professors are "liberal elitists," and that scientists are one wrong, bumbling monolithic entity, and we can't trust them. The public learns to sneer at "so-called experts" when those experts present an issue backed by scientific evidence.
Take for example the movie Arachnophobia, where the expert in arachnid biology is "punished for his arrogant knowledge" by being killed, while the everyman hero exterminator wins in the end. Consider also the difficulty of getting the public to take climate change seriously. Consider also the fact that many people still, in 2008, think that the Theory of Evolution is a matter of "debate."
Yet oddly enough, any political side will trot out its experts in the field when it needs to back up its political maneuverings. News media still interviews experts when discussing (in its ridiculous, shortsighted manner) a current issue. We still as students need those scholarly articles culled from databases. We still helplessly visit our doctors when we need to know what's wrong with us.
We need our highly educated experts, our scientists, our elite erudition. This whole sense--that our "American common sense" outweighs what some stuffy old professor or arrogant scientist says--is the entire reason why other countries are lapping us in the education department.
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