I am not sure what has you so irritated about me complaining that a news story didn't go into enough depth on the science... But a more in depth story on a trade magazine "Information Week" says:

Alanson Sample, a University of Washington intern at Intel's research facility in Seattle, demonstrated the ability to transmit 60 watts of power a distance of two or three feet, using two round metal coils, one as a transmitter, the other a receiver. The latter had a light bulb on the top that remained lit as Sample, a graduate student in electrical engineering, moved the coil around.

The technology builds on the work of Marin Soljacic, a physicist at MIT. Intel and MIT researchers are leveraging a phenomenon know as "resonant induction" in transmitting power.

That bit of information at least allows a person to then look up the science, and technology of the process.... My complaint is that the popular media is lazy and seems to intentionally dumb down science issues. (I have seen 3 news stories in the past months about how scientists are working on a cloaking device- a claim so dumbed down and so far from the truth that it is infuriating- especially when the news stories use clips from star trek to popularize the story)

For distances larger than the coil diameter I think that the power law applicable here is not 1/r^2, but the even worse 1/r^3 (I am pretty sure that is correct, but I will double check it), and the orientation of the transmitting and recieving coild will be very important...

The quoted information was just two informative paragraphs that give important information about the science involved.

Now, why does it irritate me? Well in looking around on the topic I saw people blogging about it and linking it to the 'Tesla Coverup' and panicking about it causing cancer.... When science and technology is treated as some mysterious field akin to magic that sort of nonsense flourishes...

You said: Improve America's scientific literacy and the media will improve.

I believe the media has a responsibility to help improve the scientific literacy of the public... News is supposed to inform and educate.