Is income inequality a concern? Info inequality may be far worse

If income inequality represents an increasing drag on our economy, consider the impact that the huge gap between the information-rich and the info-poor has on our democracy.
A new Pew study reveals that about two-thirds of Americans pay very little attention to the news on a day-to-day basis. Presumably, this group has little to no knowledge about current events, not to mention politics and public policy.
The Pew researchers divided the TV news audience (television still dominates as a source of news) into three segments – heavy, medium and light -- based on the amount of time people are tuned in. What they found was a stunning divide, with the top third watching far more news than the middle third. And the bottom third is simply tuned out, watching mere seconds of news per day.  

Information inequality rivals economic inequality

As summarized by AlterNet, heavy viewers watch a little over two hours of TV news a day, but medium viewers barely watch a quarter of an hour and light viewers average only two minutes a day.  The top third of the country does 88 percent of the day’s TV news viewing; the middle third watches only 10 percent of the total time; the bottom third sees just 2 percent of the minutes of news consumed. 
What’s more, the Internet is not much of a factor in the public’s knowledge of the news.

The Pew Research Journalism Project studied how Americans receive their news at home and found that only 38 percent access news on a desktop or laptop, and they spend an average of only 90 seconds a day getting news online.  

Marty Kaplan of AlterNet explains this phenomenon:
“As for those heavy news viewers, says Pew, ‘There is no news junkie like a cable junkie.’  A heavy local news viewer watches about 22 minutes of it a day at home, and a heavy network news viewer watches about 32 minutes a day.  But a heavy cable news consumer averages 72 minutes of it a day.
“The gap between heavy, medium and light cable news viewers is especially stark. Medium cable news viewers see barely more than three minutes of it a day, and light cable news viewers see about 12 seconds of it a day.  In other words, either you live in the country that watches more than an hour of Blitzer, O’Reilly, Maddow, et al, a day – or in the country that watches virtually none of them at all.”

As might be expected, Pew found a significant generation gap within all these info inequality numbers as seniors spend 84 minutes a day watching, reading or listening to the news. Those figures decline with the Baby Boomers and among Generation X until you get down to the Millennials who devoted about half that much time to the day’s news.

What about the “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show?” It’s true that young audiences learn about current events from these fake news shows, but fewer than a million and a half Americans under 50 are watching them.

Loyal Fox, MSNBC viewers are on the fringes

One encouraging sign coming out of the Pew research is that the problem with voters living within an ideological bubble is not as pronounced as previously thought.
Large percentages of cable viewers have the remote in hand, flipping from Fox to CNN to MSNBC.
Yes, about one-quarter of American adults watch only Fox News and similar loyalties are demonstrated by the audiences of CNN and MSNBC.  But more than one-fourth of Fox viewers also watch MSNBC, and more than one-third of MSNBC viewers watch Fox. 

More than half of MSNBC viewers, and nearly half of Fox viewers, watch CNN. And among CNN viewers, about 4 in 10 also watch Fox or MSNBC.

The same search for information across the political spectrum occurs online.
Some of the most popular news websites, which comprise only a small percentage of total online traffic, are affiliated with the three major cable news channels.  
Pew found that 37 percent of those who visit foxnews.com also go to nbcnews.com (which includes MSNBC-generated content), while nearly one-fourth of those who visit nbcnews.com view foxnews.com.  
In turn, about 30 percent of those who click on foxnews.com and one-fifth of those who visited nbcnews.com also go to cnn.com. Among cnn.com users, one-fourth also went to foxnews.com and one-third also clicked on nbcnews.com.
That’s a lot more crossover than we’ve been led to believe.

Polls are nearly worthless

As I pointed out earlier this month, U.S. polls about the Russian invasion of Ukraine are nearly worthless because many survey respondents fib about how closely they’re following the issue and, in truth, many of these people know so little about Ukraine they can’t even find the country on a map.
A growing amount of research – and basic man-on-the-street interviews – shows a deep degree of ignorance on many basic issues among a large segment of the population. This not only skews polls, it illogically steers public policy at a time when poll-driven politics is more dominant than ever.

Take the issue of income inequality, for example. It’s discussed routinely in the media – especially for that deeply divided triad of TV viewers Pew talked about – but the polls carry little weight because the public does not understand the weight of the issue.

A Harvard study that took the common approach of splitting up income earners into five slices of America – 20 percent of earners in each segment – found that average voters are way off in their assessment of financial inequality.
Most people guess far too low when asked how wide the gap is between rich and poor. What’s more, the study found that Americans believe an ideal distribution of wealth would be a system where the bottom 60 percent would own about half of the wealth, according to AlterNet.
In reality, the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent of the nation’s wealth. The top 1 percent holds 40 percent, which is more than what 9 in 10 people think the entire top 20 percent should own.

Finger-to-the-wind politicians may want to ponder a key question when studying poll results: Who supports Issue XYZ? Depends who you ask.