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Research Center for the People & the
Press, found that an engaged minority
of Americans are “integrators,”
people who use both the Internet
and traditional sources to get a lot of
their news. But while more and more
people are logging onto news Web
sites—and sharing what they find
with one another—until very recently
none of this activity had closed the
political knowledge gap. There is, of
course, a minority of young people—
always was and always will be—who
use whatever the
current medium
is to gain a deep
knowledge of news
and politics. But
for too many, Facebook,
MySpace,
YouTube, and other
digital media seem
to serve as more of
a distraction from
civic and political
news than as a way
to inform.
• In “The Age of Indifference,”
an important
study from the
summer of 1990, it
was revealed that
young Americans from the 1940’s to
the 1970’s were nearly as informed
as their elders about current events;
this knowledge gap began widening
in the 1970’s. 2 A decade later, Pew
asked Americans if they happen to
know the presidential candidate who
sponsored campaign finance reform.
Only about nine percent of 18-34 year
olds knew it was John McCain, far
fewer than their elders. A question
about Wesley Clark in 2004 showed
that young Americans were far less
likely than their elders to know that
he was a general.
The one exception to these dire
numbers is a recent Pew poll published
in July that asked respondents to
identify McCain and Obama’s stances
on abortion and withdrawal from Iraq.
For the first time in years, 18-to-29
24 Nieman Reports | Winter 2008
year olds seemed to know slightly
more than their elders about the candidates
and these issues. But a closer
examination must give us pause. The
poll asked whether the candidates are
“pro-choice” or “pro-life,” a yes or no
question. If respondents were totally
devoid of knowledge, we could expect
a 50 percent accuracy rate. In the
poll, only 52 percent and 45 percent
of Americans of all ages knew that,
respectively, Obama is pro-choice
and McCain is pro-life. A flipped coin
There is, of course, a minority of young people—
always was and always will be—who use whatever
the current medium is to gain a deep knowledge
of news and politics. But for too many, Facebook,
MySpace, YouTube, and other digital media seem to
serve as more of a distraction from civic and political
news than as a way to inform.
2 http://people-press.org/report/19900628/the-age-of-indifference
would do basically as well as the poll
respondents. That young people in one
poll marginally beat a flipped coin,
and the rest of us didn’t, is no cause
for celebration.
Two recent books, Mark Bauerlein’s
“The Dumbest Generation” and Rick
Shenkman’s “Just How Stupid Are
We?,” seek to plumb the depths of our
dumbness. We do, after all, live in a
nation in which many of us believed
that Saddam Hussein had a role in the
9/11 attacks years after the Bush administration
had to pull back from that
claim. Still, after conducting research
during the past five years—studies that
involved speaking with hundreds of
young people about their news habits
(and lack thereof)—I don’t find that
today’s young people are “stupid” or
“dumb.” Quite the contrary: I find
them to be just as idealistic, thoughtful
and intelligent as their parents and
grandparents were (and are). And
while they’re not dumb, most Americans,
particularly those under 40, do
have what Michael X. Delli Carpini
and Scott Keeter once called a “thin”
citizenship; this means they only follow
the outlines of democracy and, in
many cases, don’t bother to engage at
all. Most young people I talked with
during my research couldn’t name
even one Supreme Court justice or
any of the countries in Bush’s “Axis
of Evil.”
The News Habit
A thin citizenship is
good for no one. When
we don’t pay attention,
we fall for slogans and
get swayed by lofty
rhetoric with little
regard for policy differences
and voting
records. Deep citizenship
lets us hold
leaders accountable by
engaging in a deliberative
process that goes
deeper.
“The role of the
press,” said the late James W. Carey,
a journalism professor, when he addressed
a journalism educators’ conference
in 1978, “is simply to make
sure that in the short run we don’t get
screwed, and it does this best not by
treating us as consumers of news, but
by encouraging the conditions of public
discourse and life.” Carey argued that
cultivating a deep citizenship is part
of a journalist’s responsibility. If Carey
was indicating that the business part
of this equation should not be considered
as paramount, it’s important for
us to recognize that muscular citizens
are good for business, too. Not only
do citizens benefit from good journalism,
but also journalism gets a boost
from having engaged, news-hungry
citizens.
There are plenty of things that
we, as a society, can do to reverse