Time and Attention
Walter Lippmann, Michael Curtis · 2017
Naturally it is possible to make a rough estimate only of the amount of attention people give each day to informing themselves about public affairs. Very few people have an accurate idea of fifteen minutes, so the figures are not to be taken literally. Moreover, business men, professional people, and college students are most of them liable to a curious little bias against appearing to spend too much time over the newspapers, and perhaps also to a faint suspicion of a desire to be known as rapid readers. All that the figures can justly be taken to mean is that over three quarters of those in the selected groups rate rather low the attention they give to printed news of the outer world. These time estimates are fairly well confirmed by a test which is less subjective. It is still more difficult to guess how the time is distributed.