Far be it for me to defend 60% of the populace from their rightful charge of being retards. But that study is a little bit broader in their wording.

Specifically that 60% of the respondents admitted they hadn't read anything deeper than news headlines in the last week. That includes people just not really paying attention at all. People who just aren't interested in the news are honestly far more respectable than the hypothetical headline consumer, rarely is it truly relevent to their day to say decision making, and it's the kind of thing where you're better off either doing it right or not at all.

Whether that categorization blending was deliberate to achieve a result they wanted, or just because they couldn't really separate out the two because of how obnoxious media advertisements are, is debatable. Hell any time I hop on a computer with no ad-block and god forbid bing set as their homepage my eyes are defiled by 30 bullshit clickbait headlines and I'd have to admit that technically I have read more headlines than actual articles for the day, maybe even week.