Matters of Scale - Connection and Disconnection
Average number of people who tuned in to watch George W. Bush and Al Gore
speak about their candidacies for U.S. president on the Fox TV network between
8 and 9 p.m. on October 27 | 2.9 million |
Number who tuned in to watch Martin Sheen pretend to be the U.S. president
on the show "The West Wing" for a comparable hour on October 25 | 17.0 million |
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In a survey of U.S. major media news reports that used think tanks as sources of
information in 1998?1999, the number of those reports in which the think tanks that
were cited (but usually not named in the stories) were categorized by a nonpartisan
watchdog group (FAIR) as conservative or right-leaning | 8,014 |
Number of those reports in which the think tanks cited were categorized as
liberal or left-leaning | 1,632 |
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Donations (at record level) to George W. Bush's presidential primary
campaign in 1999 | over $100 million |
Unpublicized donations to the top three conservative think tanks, which shaped
U.S. public opinion by serving as primary sources in more than 8,000 major media
stories analyzing such issues as climate change, environmental regulation, economic
growth, and military spending, during the year preceding the Bush campaign | over $129 million |
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In a survey of 8,000 Florida high school students in 1978?79 (the teens of the '70s who
were to become the voters of 2000), the number who were able to name their member
of Congress | 200 |
The number who could not | 7,800 |
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Asians who had Internet access in 2000 | under 1 percent |
American children between 2 and 18 years old who had Internet access in their
bedrooms in 2000 | 7 percent |
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Sources: Number of people who tuned in: Nielsen ratings reported in the Washington
Post; Think tanks as sources:
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR); Presidential campaign donations: Washington
Post; Donations to think tanks:
FAIR; Florida high school students: Sam Harris, Reclaiming Democracy: Healing
the Break Between People and
Government (Philadelphia: Camino Books, 1994); Asians with Internet: Payal Sampat, “Internet
Use Accelerates,” Vital
Signs 2000 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000); American kids with Internet:
Kaiser Family Foundation. Flag
art reprinted with permission from Adbusters.