Question: Who needs television “news” programs, major newspapers and the like?
Answer: politicians *spit* and any other class of people seeking to control the thinking of sheeple.
Recently (h.t. LGF) I ran across a Pew Research online poll that was dipping a toe into the ignorance of online folks. It had one seriously malformed question I debated my answer to for some time (I chose to answer what it seemed to be implying and missed that one), but in general seemed to be a reasonably well-designed instrument to give a snapshot of current events awareness.
Yes, I missed the one question. I knew both answers to it *heh* but chose the narrower one. Still, my 91st percentile ranking might have told the Pew Research folks something had they asked a couple f qualifying questions the survey did not: “What major news publications do you read?” (None) “What news programs/channels do you watch?” (None)
Yep. 91st percentile–even with the one malformed question–and I do not watch network (any network) news nor do I read any major news outlet’s regurgitation of the latest views of the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind.
Heck, I avoid all but the weather on the local joke “news” programs, and I mostly avoid even that with a weather widget that has up-to-date weather info for my locale. (I do scan the local weekly rag about twice monthly. It’s not quite as bad as my all time fav lowbrow read–a rag called “The Weekly Eagle” but referred to by most of its readers as “The Weekly Buzzard”–but it’s close. I enjoy circling all the grammatical, spelling and usage errors. Red pencils get use up quickly when I read the thing, so I try to limit myself to every other week. *heh*)
So, at least in my case, exposure to no news programs, no major news outlets of any kind, results in me being better-informed than 91% of respondents.
Maybe that says something about the quality of Mass Media Podpeople “news” as well as about the electorate–or at least the online portion of the electorate interested in news, polls, etc.–you think?
Mmmmmm, could be…
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