Report Card

"Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself,' and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up."

– Jamie Lee Curtis in "A Fish Called Wanda," by John Cleese

Via Cursor, I read the latest Harris poll on "Iraq, 9/11, al-Qaida and Weapons of Mass Destruction."

Polls like this one serve as a kind of report card for those of us in the news biz.* How well we are doing our job can be gauged with both positive and negative measures of what the public knows.

By positive measures, I mean attempts to learn how well we have conveyed certain basic facts. "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments are an amusing, and depressing, example of one such measure. Leno doesn't ask tough questions. He asks people to name the vice president. Or a member of the Supreme Court. Or to list the countries/entities with which the United States is currently at war.** And many, many people are unable to answer these questions.

Watching "Jaywalking" is a deflating experience. Every day we write headlines -- simple, declarative sentences in big, bold-faced type -- containing the answers to these very questions. But apparently we're not getting through.

"Jaywalking" also demonstrates why newspapers follow a strict, take-nothing-for-granted-on-first-reference rule. This is why we write cutlines that say things like "President George W. Bush (left) ..."

But even more damning than such positive measures are the negative ones, i.e., the many things the public "knows" that are not true. That's what this Harris poll reflects. If a handful of students fails a final exam, that probably indicates a failure on the part of those students. If the entire class fails the final, that probably reflects a failure on behalf of their teacher. This Harris poll, in other words, is more damning of those of us in the news biz than it is of the hoi polloi that Leno so enjoys holding up to ridicule.

Everyone in the news biz needs to account for results like the following, and to admit that they indicate a massive failure on our part:

More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

-- 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).

-- 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37 percent in November).

-- 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38 percent in November).

Another interesting finding is that only 46 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors, a fact which most reports now support.

If you were, say, the head sports editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer and poll results indicated that, say, 47 percent of your readers erroneously believed the Eagles won the Super Bowl, then you should probably consider tendering your resignation.

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* I'm a former news desk copy editor for the largest newspaper chain in America. My latest position is "new media content management editor" -- essentially the same role, except pixels instead of ink.

** To be fair, this one's a trick question. The United States is currently engaged in three major conflicts: the occupation of Iraq, skirmishing with Taliban remnants and warlords in Afghanistan, and the vague GWOT. But I'm not even sure myself whether the U.S. is officially "at war" in any of these cases.

Comments

[matt]

To be fair, Jay Leno is asking these questions to people who live in California. If he took the show on the road he might do a little better. This is in no way a statement of East Coast bias (although that is now where I live). I have also lived in Texas. This is an example of California bias; come on, they elected Arnold, they deserve the ridicule.

[paperwight]

Not just California, but Los Angeles. Don't be slurring the rest of the state.

Also, what about North Korea? If I recall we only signed a cease-fire with them, so we might still technically be at war.

[John B]

Two things:

Jay Leno is probably reporting only the 'misses' and not the 'hits'. How many people do they have to ask before they get the ones that don't know who the vice-president is? So this may not be a fair yardstick of public ignorance.

Secondly, of those who believe the Iraq - 9/11 connection and the Iraq WMD myths, how many of them do so despite the media reporting to the contrary? The propensity of people to put their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and yell, "I'm not listening! Naa, naa, naa . . ." is all too common; I've seen it often enough in the evolution and creation debates.

No matter how much or well the press reports a story, they can't force-feed it to people.

[Patrick J. Mullins]

I'm fed up with Los Angeles bias, even though I am currently living in Manhattan, and long have. L.A. is one of the miracles of modern times, despite massive layoffs in the 90's that sent the poorer classes packing and off to the harsh discoloration of booming Las Vegas.

This is an example of truckload-of-???????'s bias.

[Kramerica]

Technically the US is still at war with North Korea, since no treaty was ever signed, only 50-year-old cease fire.

[Andrew Cory]

Technically the US is at war with no one:
Only congress has the power to declare war. Congress hasn’t declared war since WWII. Korea was a UN sponsored police action. Same as Gulf War 1...

[pgl]

Or maybe the Chicago Tribune should say the Cubbies won the World Series.

[drieux just drieux]

But Fred, What about AARP - the Homosexual Al-Qeada Terrorist Cell! A Clear enough reason for invading Iran to help privatize social security!!!

p0: folks why not admit it. The United States of America has not declared 'war' since Ronald Reagan got divorced. { do your homework! } Thus showing the clear connection between the Horrors of Liberalisms and it's main force assault on our white christian America.

p1: Also from the LaLaLand group - there is Richard M. Nixon - that defeatist puppet of his Peking Paymasters who stabbed our valiant fighting forces in the Back and abandoned our Loyal Ally the Thieu Regime to Communist Armed Aggressors!

Please folks, if we are going to pick on SoCal for being 'off', please at least try to do it with some sense of Elan.

[Mike]

"More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:"

This sort of statement is one of the reasons that people believe things that aren't true. Even this survey can't bring itself to make factual statements. They could have said, "More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following false claims." Granted, some things are unknowable in some technical sense, but not _everything_.

[eRobin]

1. Everyone knows that the Mets won the Series, the Eagles won the Superbowl and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup this year.

2. We have always been at war with North Korea.

[pudge]

It is not a "fact" that "Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors." Actually, it is nearly provably false. Note that no UN weapons inspectors were in Iraq for a few years, including the years in question where he was believed to have been developing them in earnest, and that Hussein maintained certain capabilities to create WMD, according to the Duelfer report.

If anything external prevented Hussein from developing WMD, it would be sanctions, not inspectors. Inspectors were the tool, but the ultimate goals was the lifting of sanctions, and those persisted even when inspections did not.

But even that is stretching it, as -- again, according to Duelfer -- what is most likely is that Hussein simply chose to not pursue WMD, in order to expedite the lifting of sanctions: "He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections -- to gain support for lifting sanctions -- with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring."

Now, while I certainly recognize that most Americans would not distinguish between "prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors" and "encouraged to refrain from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. sanctions," they are quite distinct, and to call the former a fact is sloppy and false.

And more to the point, to attack people who disagree with the statement presented -- which I have in a few short statements shown to be, at least, questionable -- reflects poorly on you. Your analogy of the Eagles winning the Super Bowl doesn't fit, because it is not a fact, and is actually closer to false. A better analogy might a little kid (that would be you) telling on his friend who noted that his epidermis was showing.

[Fred]

Pudge --

A reminder that I did not write the Harris poll report, so I did not use the word "fact" that you take such issue with.

And the Eagles analogy clearly refers to the poll response with a similar 47 percent, i.e., those who "believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001."

So, um, I can't see your epidermis, but your confusion is showing.

[Dan Ryan]

Anybody who thinks ignorance is only an LA thing, or only a slacker thing, hasn't watched "Talking to Americans" - a Canadian show dedicated to highlighting stupidity south of the border.

http://home.comcast.net/~wwwstephen/americans/

[DonBoy]

Rick Mercer, the host of "Talking To Americans", was on Nightline once. Koppel asked him "Look, you obviously record a lot of film and cherrypick the 'best' ones, right?" Mercer answered, "That's true; but on the other hand, we generally set up at 10 AM and by noon we have eough for a show."