Where To Get Your News
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has the findings of their latest survey on what people know about current events from different sources. It ranks peoples answers on a survey, and then divides them into three groups: high knowledge, medium knowledge, and low knowledge. These groupings are then compared to the news sources people frequent.
Not surprisingly, people who read national newspaper sites, watch the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and listen to NPR all scored very high on the survey. What is interesting is that people who watch The Daily Show with John Steward and the Colbert Report took the top slight, only slightly ahead of national newspaper website readers. And surprisingly, those who tune in to opinion mongers Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh were also in the top five.
People who read news blogs did not do particularly well. I suspect such people tend to confuse news and opinions. CNN viewers beat Fox News watcher quite handily, with the later coming in only slightly ahead of people who watch the Today Show and similar offerings.
The rest of the report is worth reading, as it breaks down a number of demographics (including how the level of education compares with what people know) and discusses what people know now compared with the same survey in 1989. One of the most pathetic statistics was that only a third of Americans knew that Muslims were broken down into Sunni and Shia. This does not compare well with the 62% of people who knew who Peyton Manning is.
A few of the lessons:
- People need to learn the difference between opinion and news. People seem to be tuning in to opinion shows in order to get the news.
- People remember things that are taught with humor. Kudos to John Stewart!
- A college degree does matter when it comes to understanding current events.
On April 18th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
A lot of those items of news information seem pretty basic. I am not surprised that people who listen to Rush know the answers to those questions. Rush is not stupid, nor are his listeners.
On April 18th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
I agree that Rush is not stupid and it is of course possible to pick up the information from his show. My point was only that it is not a news program.
Whether Rush’s listeners are stupid or not I can’t say. The callers — both those who agree and those who disagree — certainly don’t exhibit much critical thinking. Neither does Rush, however. Logical fallacies are rampant on that show, although to be fair they seem to be endemic to most talk radio programs.