Knowledge Unchanged by New News Outlets

Newsday | Apr. 15, 2007 (News Report)

Americans' knowledge of national and international affairs has changed little in two decades despite the emergence of 24-hour cable news and the Internet as major news sources.

People surveyed in February were slightly less able than those polled in 1989 to name the vice president, their state's governor and the president of Russia but slightly more able to answer other questions correctly about national politics, according to a poll released ... Full Story »

Posted by Mark Monday

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2.6

by Oliver Jones - Oct. 1, 2008

This crummy filler story simply pastes up the results of a recent Pew poll without going below the surface. One of the real stories in the actual survey is this: "despite the fact that education levels have risen dramatically over the past 20 years, public knowledge has not increased accordingly." Question: why not report that fact? Answer: see the quote. Why do newspapers waste paper on shallow stories like this? (Note: the survey isn't shallow, the story is.)