Never Mind What Americans Think; What Do They Know?

Opinion polls over the past few years have repeatedly found a majority of people in opposition to one of President Reagan’s most important foreign-policy goals--the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government.

Almost since the beginning, however, pollsters have reported a curious anomaly about the surveys of public attitudes toward the war in Nicaragua. Most people don’t know which side the United States is supporting. The caption under a New York Times opinion-poll chart last April put it succinctly: “Aid to the contras : ignorance and opposition.” The poll had revealed that 62% of the respondents opposed aid for the contras while only 38% knew that the Reagan Administration favors such aid.

Nicaragua is not the only issue on which most of the public is ignorant of the basic facts and remains so through the years. It appears that this may be true of virtually every foreign-policy issue. Most of the time, though, the pollsters don’t even bother to find out what people know before they ask what people think.

Deadline, a newsletter of New York University’s Center for War, Peace and the News Media, has just published a preview of a study of 40 years of polling on nuclear weapons and arms-control issues. Most people don’t know anything beyond the names of even the most widely discussed topics--SALT II, “Star Wars,” the nuclear freeze, the MX missile.

After reviewing the evidence gathered by Thomas W. Graham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NYU Prof. Jay Rosen commented: “Whether consciously or not, those who sponsor polls--including all the major news organizations--are creating the false impression of an active, eager public, ready with informed opinions on the issues of the day.” Those in the polling profession are aware of the problem, he says, but “continue to ask questions that are predicated upon a great deal of knowledge,” such as whether the Star Wars program will work.

Rosen suggests that the media may be maintaining the deception in order to support the myth that journalism is effective in doing its duty--to publish and broadcast the facts and a range of debate so that an informed public opinion can guide the Republic.

But that’s much too convoluted an explanation. For one thing, the media are as much victims of the phenomenon as beneficiaries. Polls, including polls sponsored by news organizations, also record and track the public’s opinions about the media themselves, and they are rarely encouraging. The most elaborate of these polls is conducted by the Gallup organization for Times Mirror Co. The latest indicates that the “believability” of both newspapers and television news organizations dropped 15 to 20 points as a result of coverage of the Iran arms-deal scandal, from about 80% to about 60%.

The benchmark for this measurement was a series of polls in 1985 that looked at the public’s attitudes and knowledge of the news media. The results were appalling:

--While 89% said that Dan Rather was “believable” or “highly believable,” only 47% could identify his picture. The only journalist recognized by a majority of the respondents was Barbara Walters.

--One out of four Americans thought that the White House press secretary is employed by the media.

--Given four possible answers, 59% could not choose the correct definition of an editorial, 45% could not figure out that a newspaper chain is “a group of newspapers that are owned by a single company.”

--Of the 58% who said that they knew something about libel law, two-thirds did not in fact know that standards are different for public officials and private citizens. Three-fourths of the general public did not understand this distinction.

--Asked which part of the Constitution “mentions freedom of the press,” only 45% could cite the First Amendment or the Bill of Rights.

The Times Mirror survey was big enough and deep enough for Gallup to segment the responses on a number of demographic scales. No one should be surprised that “levels of information correlate . . . dramatically with occupation, income, (degree of) news consumption and, of course, education.” That would be equally true, I suspect, of information about the government’s position on the contras or the nuclear freeze, neither of which is understood by a majority of the public.

As newspapers, magazines and TV news departments increasingly pitch their presentations to attract more “upscale” readers and viewers in order to attract more “upscale” advertising, information increasingly becomes a class-based commodity. Journalism thus reinforces the social division that begins in the schools and results in widespread functional illiteracy.

In a democracy everyone gets to vote, and as long as that’s the case--as it should be--everyone gets to have an opinion, whether informed or not. That’s what the polls record and the press reports. But the Kerner Commission’s warning about a bifurcation of American society along racial lines applies as well to the haves and the have-nots of the information age.