Quick thought for today. How dumb is the American public? Rather, how dumb does the news media think we are, or how dumb is our news media? Where is this coming from? Here's the story:
This morning I went to buy new tires for Christi's 4Runner. I was in the shop's waiting room reading a magazine and the news was on. I wasn't paying much attention because they were talking about grilling recipes for the 4th of July. They started showing highlights of the Uruguay-Ghana game. If you didn't see the ending of that game, it was incredible. While I am re-watching the highlights I notice the scroll bar at the bottom that displays random stories. Here is what went across.
Recent poll shows that 1 out of 5 Americans do not know who America declared independence from in 1776....76% of Americans know America declared independence from Great Britain....24% of Americans do not know who America declared independence from in 1776....survey results show the 6% of Americans who responded that America declared independence from a country but not England answered France, Russia, China, Japan, and Spain...4 out of 5 Americans know America declared independence from England
Seriously people? You think we declared independence from China? I'm surprised that many people don't know who declared independence from. I know I've forgotten a lot of history, but how can you forget that? Moreover, how many times is the media going to repeat the same thing? They said the same thing 4 times in 5 sentences! Also, I would say if 24% of the people surveyed don't know the answer, that is 1 out of 4 (25%) instead of 1 out of 5 (20%). I guess that is the engineer in me. Either way, maybe I'm incorrect, but I think if you say 1 out of 5 Americans don't know something, people can deduce that the other 4 got it right. No need to repeat it over and over.
Am I right or am I wrong? Am I giving the public too much credit there? Does the media have to dumb down everything because we are dumb (as evidenced by the poll)? What do you think?
1 comment:
when i first saw this poll, i got scared...
i was like, it is great britain, right? i thought maybe i was wrong b\c duh... but certainly everyone else knew it was gb, i figured that was obvious- but if so many americans didn't know, then maybe i was wrong too!
it's a great relief knowing it's not me!
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