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Watch the Daily Show? You're Smart. Read Blogs or Watch FOX? Not So Much
It's always a treat when studies come out that link how much individuals know with where they get their news. In the following tables, the percentage next to a media outlet's name represents the number of viewers of that outlet that can answer 15 of 23 questions about political and world affairs correctly. Not a particularly high bar.
| Daily Show/Colbert Report | 54% |
| Major Newspapers' Websites | 54% |
| NewsHour w/ Jim Lehrer | 53% |
| Bill O'Reilly | 51% |
| NPR | 51% |
| Rush Limbaugh | 50% |
Those are the folks who did well. Here's the group that did just okay.
| Newsmagazines | 48% |
| Local Newspaper | 43% |
| CNN | 41% |
Ouch, CNN. Clean up your act. And here's the folks that did really poorly. This is the funniest group.
| Network Evening News | 38% |
| Blogs | 37% |
| Fox News | 35% |
| Local TV News | 35% |
| Network Morning Shows | 34% |
I'll let you digest all of that without making the numerous easy jokes. But I'll point out two facts: First, other questions from the same poll reveal that people are about as aware of major news events today as they were 20 years ago, so the information explosion has not helped anything. And second, the national average? 35%. So the majority of the country either gets their news from FOX, local news, morning shows, or doesn't get the news from anywhere at all.
For shame, Regis and Kelly.
Update: Some other tidbits that I love. Only 69% of people in America know Dick Cheney is the vice president. Also, this: "Democrats and Republicans were about equally represented in the most knowledgeable group but there were more Republicans in the least aware group."
Ditto heads(Rush listeners) did surprisingly well. I think many listen to him for comic relief.
It makes sense that the sources at the top of the list provide commentary aside from just news. Anyone who cares enough to listen to commentary would naturally fare better on the quiz than someone who catches bits and pieces of the news or someone who doesn't watch news at all.
I not sure which is worse: that a majority of Americans don't know much about current affairs, or the possibility that a majority of Americans simply don't care.
I'd be interested in knowing what questions were asked.
Questions here: http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/
Nevermind. Found them. And may I say, they should require people to answer those questions before they vote. If you miss more than four, you don't get to vote.
***Please Note*** I'm kidding... Sorta.
I was surprised by lack of foreign policy questions other than the numbers killed, most of these questions are headline news which the answer can be found anywhere. What could really shed some light on this would be how the listeners of these various outlets form an opinion. For example one great question would be where is the most concentration of US soldiers in the world and why? Life is not multiple choice so why is it that every survey is a multiple choice? Are we afraid that we would really find out how dumb the American public is when it comes to important news that deals with people's lives? We treat everything in a black and white manner where the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. You are en fact skewing the results once you give a multiple choice because there is always a chance of say 25% someone could pick the right answer based on the number of choices of course. The real test would be if you asked people for example how many people have died in Iraq or a number of things. I got a 9 out of nine but I tell you if I had to guess the answers I would not have gotten 100%.
It's easier to score multiple choice questions and there are no ambiguous answers (even if the true answer actually is ambiguous!). But you knew that.
The blogs, got average ratings, like Fox news. Fox news(a network for the masses) has as much views as all the other net works combined. What does the average rating for the blogs mean? May be we are not from Lake Woebegone, where are the children are above average?
http://www.oyunokey.org
thanks