How Discontent with US Media (ironically) Helps to Fuel Authoritarianism [View all]

[Land Shark]

Because democracy is rule by the people, the fundamental reason-for-being of every non-democratic form of government is that the people are too dumb to be trusted with exercising power. Thus, we get rule by aristocrats, elites, experts, "smart" generals, rich "successful" oligarchs, etc.

Here's a problem: All of the well-justified and documented dissatisfaction with media news reporting causes people to tune out the news. Many now find the news too violent, authoritarian and/or upsetting to watch regularly. But if we the people don't dutifully tune in regularly to news media, we will tend fairly strongly not to know the answers to the questions in the regular surveys published in the media purporting to prove that Americans are dumb, such as:

1. Can you name three Supreme Court justices presently sitting on the US Supreme Court? (Or, how many justices are on the Supreme Court?) Answer: 9, but being unsure of the exact number on a cold call proves little or nothing.

2. What are the names of the VICE President and Secretary of State of the United States? (More than 70% get this kind of question right, but knowing the answer does nothing directly to help one protect their own rights or the rights of others.)

Other questions arguably seek political attitudes more than they seek facts, like:

3. Why did the USA engage in the Cold War? (I can think of numerous reasons and alleged reasons, but only one answer is rewarded as the "correct" answer)

Then there are the "tough trivia" questions, such as numerous questions taken from the US Citizenship test. These involve information about important subjects like the Constitution that prospective citizens cram for before taking the test, but which have no especially useful application in general political life, like:

4. How many amendments are there to the Constitution of the United States? (Answer: 27 - only 6% of Americans got this trivia right)

If Americans citizens are asked to take the citizenship test COLD - without any study or preparation - they report that 62% passed (38% failed). They report this as unquestionable evidence of Dumb America. But based on the questions asked, I'm not so sure it is.

But Europe has a different kind of news media system, and correspondingly different testing results:

"In March 2009, the European Journal of Communication asked citizens of Britain, Denmark, Finland, and the U.S. to answer questions on international affairs. The Europeans clobbered us. Sixty-eight percent of Danes, 75 percent of Brits, and 76 percent of Finns could, for example, identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same—even though we’ve led the charge in Afghanistan." http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html

Americans are not intrinsically dumber than Danes, Brits, or Finns. And, the difference is not just school civics classes -- too many Europeans haven't attended school in the last fifteen years so they couldn't possibly learn about "Taliban" in school. Almost the ONLY way one knows about the Taliban to the point of being able to have instant recall of the name on a cold call phone survey is via witnessing extensive repetition by media of various forms.

But when Americans drop out of the propaganda media mills, they will increasingly tend to fail these political trivia tests, leading to even more moaning about dumb Americans not being sophisticated enough to be trusted with ruling. They always omit the last italicized clause, but it seems obvious that no rational person wants dumb people in charge of a country (via democracy). Thus, "dumb American" surveys help lay the foundation for more authoritarian systems of government, whether intended to do so or not.

Ironically, media discontent - if it leads to people refusing to watch any more of the latest disturbing news and images - helps to lower political trivia test scores. Thus, the bets are hedged: authoritarian attitudes are furthered by extensive media consumption in the USA, but they are also furthered by media non-consumption habits in the form of lower scores on political knowledge surveys, appearing to prove that dumb Americans either need to tune in more, or pay the price for being too dumb.