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NEWS > U.S.A. > POLL FINDS 37% OF AMERICANS UNABLE TO LOCATE AMERICA, 70% UNABLE TO READ POLLS

POLL FINDS 37% OF AMERICANS UNABLE TO LOCATE AMERICA, 70% UNABLE TO READ POLLS

December 15 2008

Washington, D.C. – According to a report published on The Huffington Post 37% of Americans are unable to locate their own country on a map of the world. The revelation reputedly comes from a Gallup/Harris poll, and though clearly not accurate and written by a comedy writer, the piece has gained quite a lot of attention illustrating that while Americans may be able to read the basics of a map, they have limited ability to read between the lines.

“Of the respondents actually capable of pinpointing America on the map of America, their accuracy decreased considerably with each additional query about the country,” said the article written by Canadian comedy writer Steven Shehori. “Asked for the name of the U.S. capital, those polled placed Washington, D.C., fifth behind ‘Minneapolis-St. Paul,’ ‘Mount Rushmore,’ ‘America City,’ and ‘Whitewater.’”

While The Huffington Post is regarded as a largely accurate and mostly respectable publication, the fusion of false news alongside such important articles such as “Sarah Palin's Dad Says She'll Be a Great Grandmother” and “Obama Family Goes Christmas Tree Shopping (PHOTOS)” with such apparent ease illustrates the underlying commentary of the apprently false article.

“According to many polls most Americans do not know how to read polls, and the same polls show that Americans do not trust what they can’t read. What this article illustrates is how easy it is to just throw numbers around and make them seem as though they come from a legitimate source and have people buy it,” said Scrape TV Media analyst Sarah Piper. “The concerning thing in this era of blogs and diffused media is how readily these kind of things can be taken as fact. There was a time when stories about batboys were consigned to tabloid papers that were very clearly false, but now the lines between real news and fake news has been erased and the truth rubbed away with it. It would be a major concern if it weren’t for the fact that most Americans don’t really care about the truth, at least according to recent polls.”

According to Zogby, 63% of Americans don’t know if the news they are reading is true and a whopping 74% don’t care. A full 70% stated either an inability to read opinion polls or had expressed a disinterest in analysing them.

“Generally the reason people gave was that they believed reporters do their research and so there is no reason to question the results,” said David Phelps of Zogby International. “We also found that 34% of people did not like to participate in polls, and that 52% of those people did not even understand the questions being asked of them.”

According to polls, the 47% of people prefer Zogby polls versus 43% in favour of Gallup/Harris polling. 8% had no opinion and the remaining 2% preferred ‘other’.

“Polling has always had a place in American culture because it’s easier for readers to understand simple percentages, and because it’s easy for reporters to sound legitimate when they put numbers in their pieces,” continued Piper. “According to a poll from the National Opinion Research Center only 12% of American’s read between the lines and an incredible 82% of people don’t understand how you can read the white space between the sentences.”

While the poll at the centre of the original article may have proven to be false, the question it brings up is quite sound. Considering the recent noise over Governor Sarah Palin’s inability to understand even basic geography, the question of what level of geographical knowledge the average American possesses is a legitimate question.

“From my experience the only country most Americans are able to identify on the map is their own. They know there are other countries in the world but most have difficulty indentifying even major countries like the U.K. or France,” concluded Piper. “Most can get Canada and Mexico but that’s about it. Of course this is only observation. I don’t have any numbers to back it up so I don’t expect anyone to pay attention to the rest of this sentence. I’d guess about 60% of people have already stopped reading.”

Mike Michaels, American Correspondent

NEWS > U.S.A. > POLL FINDS 37% OF AMERICANS UNABLE TO LOCATE AMERICA, 70% UNABLE TO READ POLLS

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