In the education post both Carol and I start with this Gallup poll that shows a very high satisfaction rate (77%) with how schools are educating children. Parents generally think their child is getting a good education. But those other kids? The poll shows that only 46% are satisfied with education in the country.
What accounts for this discrepancy?
I’m willing to bet that it’s our news media, aka MSM, including newspapers, cable news, and broadcast news.
When it comes to things people can see and judge for themselves, their children, their community, their schools; they mostly like what they see. But they can’t see the whole nation, so how do they get informed? They turn on the news.
Last year nearly every person in the US House of Representatives received more than half the votes of the district they represent (there may have been a few who won with a plurality). Everyone in the Senate (again excluding the occasional pluralities) won more than 50%. Because of redistricting many of these politicians receive well over 50% of the vote.
And yet, approval of the US Congress averages about 34% so far in 2009, with an abysmal low of 19% on the eve of Obama’s inauguration (and heading back to that cellar with a recent approval rating of 21%).
Again, locally we’re pretty satisfied, but our impression of the nation is that things are dismal. Where do we get our information about the nation? The giant news orgs.
We all remember the poll that showed watching FOX News actually made people dumber, but I think the problem is a lot broader and deeper than the content at one cable news station.
So, is the Web the answer?
I don’t think so. I think the problem stems from the increasing homogeneity of our news sources. FOX is the most obvious, because it is the most homogeneous, but if cable helped create niche news networks like FOX, then the Internet is creating hyper-niche news services like Huffington Post or WorldNewsDaily. The Internet, rather than opening the world to us has, rather counter-intuitively, accelerated our homophilic clustering.
Homophily is the old adage; birds of a feather flock together. The Internet makes finding like-minded people easier than ever, but the more time we spend in the company of those who reinforce our prejudices and fail to challenge our misconceptions, the more ignorant and biased we become.
The MSM may make us dumb, but if allow ourselves to continue down the new media road that’s been laid before us, the Internet will make us dumber.
