He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons of the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no grounds for preferring either opinion....Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations....He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them, who defend them in earnest and do their utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of the truth which meets and removes that difficulty.
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
There's a need for intelligent dissent, if only to make right opinion into knowledge, and, frankly, Democracy Now! just isn't cutting it. Amy Goodman: get a job.