Which shows have the smartest audiences?

[cyberdude557]

Have you ever wondered which audience of TV/Radio shows are the smartest? For example, many say Rush Limbaugh listeners are stupid or that MSNBC watchers are stupid....But has anyone ever did a study? Pew Research did that....

They asked people 3 simple questions...
1. Which political party currently has a majority in Congress?
2. Who is the current Secretary of State?
3. Who is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain?

Overall...Americans bombed this test big-time. Only about 50% knew Democrats control Congress. Only 42% could identify Condoleeza Rice as the Secretary of State. Less than 30% can name Gordon Brown as the British Prime minister. Only 18% of Americans answered all 3 questions correctly.

So breaking it down by who watches what...
The New Yorker/Atlantic: 71 percent (correctly identified Democrats as the majority in the House), 71 percent (correctly identified Condeleeza Rice), 59 percent (correctly identified Gordon Brown)
NPR: 73 percent, 72 percent, 57percent
Hannity & Colmes: 84 percent, 73 percent, 49 percent
Rush Limbaugh: 83 percent, 71 percent, 41 percent
Colbert Report: 73 percent, 65 percent, 49 percent
Daily Show: 65 percent, 48 percent, 36 percent
NewsHour: 66 percent, 52 percent, 47 percent
O'Reilly Factor: 70 percent, 60 percent, 41 percent
C-SPAN: 63 percent, 59 percent, 35 percent
Letterman/Leno: 51 percent, 42 percent, 31 percent
CNN: 59 percent, 48 percent, 29 percent
National Enquirer: 44 percent, 32 percent, 22 percent

Now some would say that not knowing the British prime minister is not surprising since these are American news networks that dont report much about Britain. Problem is, only 44% of those Americans that get news from the BBC know that Gordon Brown is the British PM.

So which news network audiences had the best scores? Surprisingly the most knowledgeable were audiences of MSNBC and FOX News. 44% of people who watch Chris Matthews "Hardball" got all 3 questions correct. 43% of those that watch "Hannity and Colmes" got all 3 questions correct. Which major network did the worst? In almost every category, CNN did the worst.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081015/sc_livescience/americansflunksimple3questionpoliticalsurvey

[ufojoe]

Reminds me of this study a few years back...

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/714.html

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public’s mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy � discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq � helped fuel support for the war.

While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans’ opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.

As the researchers explained in their report, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.�

Almost shocking was the extent to which Fox News viewers were mistaken. Those who relied on the conservative network for news, PIPA reported, were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three.�