"WE" are not that dumb. Sadly the same cannot be said of most Americans. So many care more about who the Kardashians are sleeping with, who The Bachelor is going to pick, or what the Real Housewives of Whatever are up to, than they do what is going on in their country. These people only get news in small bites and take the news they do get as gospel truth. They are often referred to as "sheeple" because they are easily led....sometimes even to the slaughter.
When the media and government say purposefully misleading things, they know some of us will see through the bovine excrement, but they are NOT talking to us. They are leading the sheeple, and they know it works.