Newspaper decline traced to widespread illiteracy

One reason for the decline of newspaper circulation is that 42 million Americans are illiterate and roughly 50 million more are semi-literate, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges says. What's more, he adds, 80 percent of U.S. households last year did not buy a book. "The rates of illiteracy or semi-literacy---meaning people reading at a fourth or fifth grade level---now comprise one-third of the United States," says Hedges, "and even those who are technically literate opt into a system where they get most of their information through images---images which are of course skillfully manipulated." Hedges, a former war correspondent for The New York Times, is quoted in "News Media in Crisis,"(Doukathsan) as saying, "With the decline in newspapers and the decline of a literature culture, American society "is essentially walking into a world of moral nihilism, where we no longer embrace values." Newspaper readership has also fallen off because "we have a large, sustained, well-funded set of people out there who attack honest reporting" and who have created "a belief that the news is not to be trusted," adds David Cay Johnston, like Hedges a former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner.