A big honkin’ Pew Research study of the media and American awareness of current events came out recently, and all of the blogs are abuzz. Most of the study is separating news viewers into various categories, seeing where they got their news, how dubious they are of what they see, and who watches what. In the middle, though, is an interesting little piece on general knowledge.
About half of Americans (53%) can correctly identify the Democrats as the party that has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 2007, shortly after the Democrats gained control of the House after a dozen years of GOP rule, many more people (76%) knew the Democrats held the majority.
The public is less familiar with the secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice) and the prime minister of Great Britain (Gordon Brown). About four-in-ten (42%) can name Rice as the current secretary of state. The public’s ability to identify Rice has not changed much over recent years: In April 2006 and December 2004, shortly before she was sworn in, 43% could correctly identify her.
For reasons that completely escape me, the “political knowledge” test consisted entirely of identifying the Secretary of State, the British PM, and who has the majority in Congress. That still tells us some interesting stuff (did people actually forget who holds the majority between February 2007 and now??), but there’s a whole slew of other stuff worth asking:
- Who are the presidential nominees and what are their current positions in the government?
- What Senator was recently indicted?
- Any foreign leader: Germany, France, Israel, Iran, Russia, Pakistan. Pick three. Bonus if you give their proper title.
- True or false: Iran has nuclear weapons.
- True or false: Barack Obama is a Muslim.
- Name the House and Senate majority leaders.
I could go all day. I point this out because the results show a lot of educated viewers in areas I wouldn’t expect (yes, I mean FOX viewers). This isn’t just because of bias, it’s because in 2003 a PIPA study showed that FOX and right-wing talk radio audiences were hilariously misinformed on everything around the “war on terror”, believing that Iraq had WMDs, Saddam was connected to 9/11, and world opinion supported the war. Not matters of subjectivity, they were just flat wrong.
So this poll, being generally soft (why Gordon Brown? Honestly, why not Musharraf or Ahmadinejad or Putin?) and asking few controversial questions is a bit misrepresentative of how much people who rely on various sources actually know, but it does show just how ignorant people are generally.
