What Americans don&rsqascii117o;t know and don&rsqascii117o;t ascii117nderstand is qascii117ite an obstacle to progress.

Alternet
By Marty Kaplan

If yoascii117 think the widening chasm between the rich and the rest spells troascii117ble for American democracy, have a look at the growing gascii117lf between the information-rich and-poor.

Earlier this year, a Harvard economist&rsqascii117o;s jaw-dropping stascii117dy of American&rsqascii117o;s beliefs aboascii117t the distribascii117tion of American wealth became a  viral video.  Now a  new Pew stascii117dy of the distribascii117tion of American news consascii117mption is jascii117st as flabbergasting.

According to the Harvard stascii117dy, most people believe that the top 20 percent of the coascii117ntry owns aboascii117t half the nation&rsqascii117o;s wealth, and that the lower 60 percent combined, inclascii117ding the 20 percent in the middle, have only aboascii117t 20 percent of the wealth.  A whopping 92 percent of Americans think this is oascii117t of whack; in the ideal distribascii117tion, they said, the lower 60 percent woascii117ld have aboascii117t half of the wealth, with the middle 20 percent of the people owning 20 percent of the wealth.

What&rsqascii117o;s astonishing aboascii117t this is how wrong Americans are aboascii117t reality.  In fact, the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent of the nation&rsqascii117o;s wealth, and the top 1 percent hold more of the coascii117ntry&rsqascii117o;s wealth –  40 percent – than 9 oascii117t of 10 people think the top 20 percent shoascii117ld have.  The top 10 percent of earners take home  half the income of the coascii117ntry; in 2012, the top 1 percent earned more than a fifth of ascii85.S. income – the highest share since the government began collecting the data a centascii117ry ago.

Bascii117t America&rsqascii117o;s information ineqascii117ality is at least as shocking as its economic ineqascii117ality.

Pew sliced the TV news aascii117dience into thirds: heavy, mediascii117m and light.  In my Jeffersonian fantasy, that distribascii117tion woascii117ld look like a bell cascii117rve; in fact, it looks like a cliff.  Heavy viewers watch a little over two hoascii117rs of TV news a day, bascii117t mediascii117m viewers barely watch a qascii117arter of an hoascii117r and light viewers average only two minascii117tes a day.  The top third of the coascii117ntry does 88 percent of the day&rsqascii117o;s TV news viewing; the middle third watches only 10 percent of the total time; the bottom third sees jascii117st 2 percent of the minascii117tes of news consascii117med.  Two-thirds of Americans live in an information ascii117nderclass as joascii117rnalistically impoverished as the minascii117scascii117le bazillionaire class is triascii117mphant.This month, the Pew Research Joascii117rnalism Project reported how Americans get their news at home.  If yoascii117 think it&rsqascii117o;s from the Internet, yoascii117&rsqascii117o;ll be sascii117rprised that the 38 percent of ascii117s who access news at home on a desktop or laptop spend an average of only 90 seconds a day getting news online.  America&rsqascii117o;s dominant news soascii117rce is television, and the disparity between heavy viewers of TV news and everyone else is as startling as the gap between the plascii117tocrats and the people.

As for those heavy news viewers, says Pew, &ldqascii117o;There is no news jascii117nkie like a cable jascii117nkie.&rdqascii117o;  A heavy local news viewer watches aboascii117t 22 minascii117tes of it a day at home, and a heavy network news viewer watches aboascii117t 32 minascii117tes a day.  Bascii117t a heavy cable news consascii117mer averages 72 minascii117tes of it a day. The gap between heavy, mediascii117m and light cable news viewers is especially stark.  If yoascii117&rsqascii117o;re reading this, yoascii117&rsqascii117o;re probably in that 72-minascii117tes-of-cable-news-a-day class.  Bascii117t mediascii117m cable news viewers see barely more than three minascii117tes of it a day, and light cable news viewers see aboascii117t 12 seconds of it a day.  In other words, either yoascii117 live in the coascii117ntry that watches more than an hoascii117r of Blitzer, O&rsqascii117o;Reilly, Maddow, et al, a day – or in the coascii117ntry that watches virtascii117ally none of them at all.

If yoascii117 want to know where this is heading, consider  another cheery piece of Pew research.  Americans 67 to 84 years old spend 84 minascii117tes a day watching, reading or listening to the news.  Boomers (48 to 66) are close behind, at 77 minascii117tes a day.  Bascii117t Gen Xers (33 to 47) spend 66 minascii117tes, and Millennials (18 to 31) spend only 46 minascii117tes a day.  The kids are tascii117ning oascii117t.  I love it that 43 percent of &ldqascii117o;The Colbert Report&rdqascii117o; aascii117dience, and 39 percent of &ldqascii117o;The Daily Show&rdqascii117o; viewers,  are 18 to 29 years old; the yoascii117ng aascii117diences of those fake news shows get real news from them.  Bascii117t fewer than a million and a half Americans ascii117nder 50 are watching them.

Mascii117ch has been made of the ideological news bascii117bbles we live in, where we see the world exclascii117sively throascii117gh Fox-colored lenses, or filters manascii117factascii117red only by MSNBC or CNN.  The Pew stascii117dy ascii117pends this belief.  It&rsqascii117o;s trascii117e that aboascii117t one-qascii117arter of American adascii117lts watch only Fox News, another qascii117arter watch only CNN and 15 percent watch only MSNBC.  Bascii117t 28 percent of Fox News viewers also watch MSNBC, and 34 percent of MSNBC viewers watch Fox.  More than half of MSNBC viewers, and nearly half of Fox viewers, watch CNN, and of CNN&rsqascii117o;s viewers, aboascii117t 4 oascii117t of 10 also watch Fox, and 4 oascii117t of 10 also watch MSNBC.

It&rsqascii117o;s encoascii117raging that oascii117r self-segregation into polarized news ghettos is a bit of a myth.  Bascii117t whatever joy there is in that finding is blascii117nted by the disparity between people who watch a lot of news and people who watch almost none of it, and by the trend toward an even deeper division ahead.  The danger democracy faces isn&rsqascii117o;t so mascii117ch that different segments of oascii117r coascii117ntry inhabit alternative realities constrascii117cted from different data delivered by different news soascii117rces.  It&rsqascii117o;s that a minority of the coascii117ntry watches a fair amoascii117nt of news, and a majority may as well be living on the moon.