With so many news outlets, are WE any better informed today about national and international affairs?

Every morning, I start my day with my cup of caffeine in hand and my radio (CBS 880) in the background. (Not that u needed to know that). So this morning, while getting ready for school and running late as usual, I wasn't really paying attention to the news, coz it was the same gripping story on the Virginia shootings, no new information had really been released and they were about to have a press conference to reveal the Identity of the "mentally deranged retarded psychotic loner" who carried out the execution style shooting Spree in one of the engineering buildings on the Blacksburg Virginia Tech Campus. Personally, I think his corpse should be beheaded in public with a guillotine. Uhm, ok maybe that was a little much, I need to take a chill pill, but anyway u get the point. Ok, I just veered off topic a little bit, pardon me

So anyway, the next news bit that came on on the radio was a feature story on the "Osgood file." It focused on whether, news consumers are better informed now, as opposed to say, 50 years ago when most ppl could not really afford a tv set. Technically, it should be that way, because we now have innumerable amount of news outlets, both web-based and otherwise. But unfortuinately, this isn't the case.

Despite the proliferation of media outlets in recent years, the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

On average, today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago, the survey found. The new survey includes nine questions that are either identical or roughly comparable to questions asked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2007, somewhat fewer were able to name their governor, the vice president and the president of Russia, but more respondents than in the earlier era gave correct answers to questions pertaining to national politics.

In 1989, for example, 74 percent could come up with Dan Quayle’s name when asked who the vice president is. Today, somewhat fewer (69 percent) are able to recall Dick Cheney. However, more Americans now know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is generally considered a conservative and that Democrats control Congress than knew these things in 1989. Some of the largest knowledge differences between the two time periods may reflect differences in the amount of press coverage of a particular issue or public figure at the time the surveys were taken. But taken as a whole the findings suggest little change in overall levels of public knowledge, according to the survey.

The survey provides further evidence that changing news formats are not having a great deal of impact on how much the public knows about national and international affairs. The polling does find the expected correlation between how much citizens know and how avidly they watch, read or listen to news reports. The most knowledgeable third of the public is four times more likely than the least knowledgeable third to say they enjoy keeping up with the news “a lot,” the report said.

O.I.U