San Diego Union-Tribune Reader's Representative (=ombudsman) Carol Goodhue has a column that runs every Monday. (It's actually a pretty good column, as was that of her predecessor, Gina Lubrano. That is why I still read it five years after leaving San Diego.) In her most recent column, she notes an interesting Pew survey about news consumers and their awareness of current events. She provides a link to an online version of the poll, which I just HAD to take. I got eight of the nine questions right. Amusingly, the only question I got wrong was the one question was a follow-up to a previous question--if you did not answer the first question correctly, the follow-up question was not asked. The link to the report is here. At the top of the report there is a link to the quiz (here); take the quiz before reading the report if you want an accurate report of your knowledge. According to Pew, my score was in the 91st percentile, while the average score in my demographic group was considerably lower (men 36-49 with some college averaged 5.3 correct answers).
Interestingly enough, the news outlet with the lowest percentage of "low-knowledge" customers was The O'Reilly Factor, although it didn't have the highest percentage of well-informed viewers; that honor went to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, satirical news shows that apparently are imparting some knowledge to their viewers.
posted on May 11, 2007 02:22 PM
