JR-
I can't speak for anyone else, but in my view the essence of the issue is the withholding of information rather than having adequate channels to communicate it.
You mentioned insurance coverage, and that provides a good example. It may be a cost issue to send a copy of the policy to every member, but what about sending a copy to each club where it could be accessed easily by at least half of the membership? Putting it on the web site has been mentioned, and is an obvious answer for many that would involve little cost. It isn't there because somebody doesn't want you to have it.
The EC meeting minutes are another example. In any picked at random you will find items like this one from the last EC meeting:
"E-mail vote of June 16, 2003 re the proposal EC-05-02.
7 no; 2 yes; two districts did not vote and there was one abstention."
How informative is that to the average member? Was it supposed that we all should know what EC-05-02 is about? I submit that it was for a $6,000,000 golden parachute for Dave Brown. If you know different, pray tell.
Then there is the 1st Motion, to make a 'minor change to AMA's definition of a model aircraft' that most members will never see until they receive and read the 2004 Safety Code. Then they might notice that a small but significant minority of modelers that fly autonomous models have been disenfranchised by 'their' organization by this 'minor' change without any notice or any discussion by anyone not present at the EC meeting - it wasn't even on the agenda, and after the fact it isn't in the minutes, except for the silly rationale behind it.
AMA fails to communicate with members when they don't want members' input while they are dealing with issues that impact us but they know better than we do what is good for us, and at times when they don't want us to know what they have done even after the fact. It has much less to do with lack of media for distribution of information than it does with lack of motivation to have an informed membership.

H(*)