The Pew Research people are out with another one of those
quizzes that makes the average news junkie or political junkie roll their eyes
and wonder aloud how our democracy has survived.
The “News IQ Quiz” consisted of 13 rather simple
questions on a variety of current events topics.
(Spoiler Alert: If you’re interested in taking the quiz,
click here before you continue reading.)
The average score among the 1,000-plus participants was 8.5
out of 13, a score of 65% correct or, when put into student report card
terminology, was a grade of “D” or “F,” depending on your scoring system.
What’s so disturbing about this result is that the quiz
was dumbed-down by relying upon pictures, symbols, graphs and maps, rather than
detailed questions. And it was multiple choice.
For example, a participant was shown a photo of N.J. Gov.
Chris Chistie, one of the highest-profile politicians in the nation for the
past several months. The question was simply, who is this? The four choices (each
pictured) were Christie, Newt Gingrich, Scott Walker and Rush Limbaugh.
The cringe-worthy result was that 37 percent chose the
wrong answer.
A lineup of four photos – John Kerry, Colin Powell, Condoleezza
Rice and Bill Richardson — was presented in another question that asked, Who
is the new Secretary of State? Some 50 percent of the participants with a high
school education or less picked the wrong photo.
One question presented the blue bird symbol for Twitter but
only 75 percent correctly identified it as the Twitter logo. Seems pretty easy,
doesn’t it?
Yet, overall, one-fourth of those taking the quiz got
less than half the questions right. And just think: These people vote.