I'm not surprised, since, for some unknown reason, Pew Research itself seemed determined to botch the results of its own polling data. But now we have Slate pushing the false claim that most Americans wouldn't care if their local newspaper folded. It's part of a larger Slate contrarian piece (surprise!) about how newspapers aren't really that important to democracy.

From Slate's Jack Shafer [emphasis added]:

If you're a big proponent of democracy, you'll be interested to know that a majority of Americans don't care whether their local newspaper lives or dies. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month shows that fewer than half of Americans “say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community 'a lot.' ” Hell, I'll bet that if you put the abolishment of newspapers on the ballot in a lot of cities, it just might pass.

In terms of a majority not caring if their newspaper dies, that's just flat out wrong, and therefore kicks a significant leg out from the Slate argument. As we already noted in detail, what the Pew poll actually found was that a majority of Americans (58%) would care if their newspaper folded: 33% would miss it a “lot,” and 25% would miss it “some.” That's 58%. And among those polled who called themselves regular newspaper readers, a whopping 80% said they would miss their daily if it folded.

Why are Slate and Pew so determined to misread, and mislead about, those results?

As for Slate's larger point that newspapers aren't important to democracy, Pew found that an overwhelming majority of American rejected that claim: 74% say losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community. (81% among regular newspaper readers.)

Personally, I just don't get this mini-push to claim that readers don't care about newspapers. But please, let's not use phony numbers to prop up the soggy claim.