Three pieces of news created a vortex last week.

First came the Harvard Business School's report, subtitled "Political Dysfunction is the Greatest Barrier to Strengthening U.S. Competitiveness."

"U.S. gross domestic product grew at a rate of about 2 percent since 2000, well below the 3 to 4 percent average in the prior half-century," it reads. "The study contends that factors including a growing wealth gap, declines in productivity growth, and a rise in the number of working-age people neither employed nor seeking jobs show that the U.S. economy is becoming less competitive."

Worse, though, was Washington's growing penchant for both willful gridlock and disfunction, as well as a growing amount of mis- and disinformation making it into the mainstream from online news and social media..

"To us, the confused national discussion about our economy and future prosperity in this election year is our worst nightmare," they note. "There is almost a complete disconnect between the national discourse and the reality of what is causing our problems and what to do about them. This misunderstanding of facts and reality is dangerous, and the resulting divisions make an already challenging agenda for America even more daunting."

Next up on our radar was a new study out of Tufts University that found that high school students across the country are not being taught what it means to be a Republican or Democrat.

"It's probably fair to say that Federalists and Whigs are mentioned more than Democrats and Republicans," said one of the authors of the study, which used voluminous research in all fifty states. "Merely mentioning the role of political parties is not enough to prepare future voters, who rely on ideological orientations to make decisions at the ballot box."

The problem, the study found, is that many state standards are political documents that get haggled over, with lawmakers and policy experts wrangling to make social studies as nonpartisan as possible. Only one state, North Carolina, even includes the words Democrat or Republican in its social studies curriculum.

Making matters worse, the authors of the study have noted since its release, is the tenor of this year's election, and particularly Donald Trump's taunting way with anyone he perceives as an opponent.

Finally came a major story in The Atlantic, still one of the nation's most respected journals (as well as one of its oldest) which talked about how only 32 percent of Americans say they have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust and confidence in the media. Why the massive distrust?

The article referenced a new Gallup poll which noted that the public's highest trust level for the press was 72 percent in 1976, during the heyday of media investigations of government corruption such as the Watergate scandal and government failures such as the Vietnam war. But things started eroding through the Reagan and Clinton years. Today, the poll found, Republicans' trust in the media has fallen to 14 percent today, from 32 percent in 2015 and from 41 percent in 1997, while 51 percent of Democrats trust the media today, down from 64 percent in 1997. Thirty percent of independents trust the media, down from 53 percent in 1997.

In terms of age, the younger one is the more one distrusts media, it turns out. Or at least media news. A Gallup spokesman said the decline in trust probably is due to the "divisive" presidential election.

The Atlantic's take on it all? Partly they note Trump's claim to be behind it as merely a brag. More problematic was a shift in the contexts by which people seek their news, a broadening of what is now seen as "media," as well as self-inflicted wounds on the media's part.

"The race for readers and ratings carries the risk of reducing trust in 'the media' because so many media organizations often distinguish themselves by demonstrating their superiority over mainstream news," they wrote. "It's as if every media organization is also a media critic... Today's journalists are more comfortable taking strong positions on partisan issues than they used to be."

And finally, that broadening of "media."

"If there are enough outlets for every American to read that their biases are right," The Atlantic, and we, conclude, "there are enough outlets for readers to get the impression that most people, and most media, is wrong."

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