A few extra prepositions here, but you have the point.

This use of "oriented to" is clumsy, in my opinion -- I had to read it carefully and think about it before I worked out what it means, which is a mark of poor style -- but it does actually make sense. "How the genre is oriented to" means "how people orient to the genre", which is roughly synonymous with "how people approach/interpret/respond to the genre", or "what attitude people have to the genre".

The verb is "orient", used intransitively, with "to". Here are a few examples of its use, culled from the Internet:

"This conclusion is based on research done during the last few decades by various research scientists including Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd and is helpful because by understanding how people orient to time, we can partially predict their behavior."
http://www.freebookspot.cc/Comments.aspx?Element_ID=41271

"Several of these theories look at individual differences in how people orient to message planning and design."
http://books.google.es/books?id=r3Fk0aRpJM4C&pg=PA119&lpg=PA...

"When we examine “information work” from this perspective, understanding the temporal features of the work and how people orient to and use these features in the course of their daily work is essential."
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=959773

The passive use of a phrasal verb, as in this example, is always liable to produce a confusing or at best inelegant result, particularly with another preposition immediately following. The same problem would have arisen with "respond to", though perhaps that would have been easier to understand ("how the genre is responded to"). The writer would have done better to use a transitive verb.

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Note added at 46 mins (2011-05-12 08:06:08 GMT)
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So the sentence could be recast as follows:

"Throughout this chapter we have seen examples of how people orient to the genre with an expectation that it will be a reliable and authoritative source of information, debate and analysis."

I do not agree with the widespread view that the passive voice should be systematically avoided in all cases, but it would certainly have been better to avoid it in this case.

I think that the speaker is saying that the audience turns to the television news "with an expectation that it will be a reliable and authoritative source of information, debate and analysis."

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Note added at 51 mins (2011-05-12 08:10:53 GMT)
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In other words, they turn to the TV news as an authority, thus turning away from other sources (such as the UK tabloid press, perhaps), which they consider less authoritative but might look to for entertainment with a bit of information (of doubtful reliability) included.