Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Bob Somerby on the widely-reported Pew poll showing that most people don’t know much about either their own religion or anyone else’s:

Can we talk? We the people always turn out to be “deeply ignorant,” on any information survey. In response, major broadcasters feign surprise. It’s how such things are done.

My favorite, as longtime readers know, is the annual geography survey that always produces howls of indignation. 70% of high school kids don’t know where France is! 80% can’t find Kansas City on a map!

Of course, no one ever bothers testing adults, who would probably do just as poorly. Just as they do poorly on surveys of American history, constitutional knowledge, current events, and everything else. Most of us just don’t know very much about anything.

And least of all about complicated legislative proposals. A couple of days ago I linked to an AP poll that asked people what they thought about healthcare reform. I decided to devote my post to the question of whether a more liberal proposal would have been more popular (almost certainly not), which didn’t leave room to talk about a long series of questions AP asked about the legislation itself. Basically, they wanted to find out what people knew about the law, and the answer is: meh. Of the true items AP mentioned, 69% thought they were part of the law. Of the made-up items, 37% thought they were part of the law. Not bad, I guess (and note that these numbers assume that I know which items were right and which were wrong), but it’s still the case that 20% of the country thinks you’ll have to disclose major diseases to your employer, 30% think the law requires insurance companies to charge smokers an extra $1,000, 40% think death panels will be empowered to pass judgment on individual treatment, and 50% think the law requires doctors to treat illegal immigrants.

Now where do you think so many people could have gotten these ideas? It’s not just simple ignorance at work, though that’s certainly part of it. It’s the noise machine. If you listened to Rush and Sean and Sarah and Glenn and Drudge all day, you’d probably believe most of this stuff too. And you’d oppose the law. Who wouldn’t?

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate