2wolves

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/new...aq/6918170.htm

"The three common mistaken impressions are that:

U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it."

All three are liberal lies of course. </sarcasm

2Wolves

Thraeryn

Whoawhoawhoa. It's the conservative Republicans that made the links, pressed Congress, and started the war. It's a Republican in the White House running the press campaign to make us believe we have the world's backing.

So unless you mean "liberal" in the sense that they were lies of outrageous proportion instead of limited proportion, you'd better just take that back now.

(And I'm a Libertarian, not a Democrat. Or a Republican.)

maximusveritas

wow, this is some pretty damning evidence against FoxNews.
People who named FoxNews as their primary source of news had a much higher chance of having a misconception.

At first, I thought this was just because most FoxNews viewers are conservative Bush supporters, so they would naturally believe anything to help support their cause. But then I noticed the stat that the average rate of misconception for Republicans who watch FoxNews is 54%, while the rate for Republicans who watch PBS/NPR is 32%. Also, 48% of Democratic supporters who watched FoxNews had the misconception that the US has found evidence of a direct Saddam-Al Qaeda link. But not a single Democrat who got their news from PBS/NPR had this misconception.

So then I considered that perhaps its just that the people who tend to watch FoxNews and CBSNews(2nd highest rate) tend to be less educated and intelligent and may not take as much of an interest in the news. Then, I noticed the interesting stat that while for all other news sources, those who kept up with the news more closely had a LOWER rate of misconception, FoxNews viewers who kept up with the news more closely tended to have a HIGHER rate of misconception. For example, on the issue of whether the US has found WMD in Iraq yet, FoxNews viewers who watched very closely had the highest rate of misconception at 44%, while those who watched less closely had a lower rate(somewhat=32%, not very=24%, not at all=34%). Meanwhile, among those who use the print media as their primary source, those who didn't follow the news at all were much more likely(35%) to have misconceptions than those who watched more closely (not very=14%, somewhat=18%, very=13%).

Those who have said that FoxNews is harmless should take note of these numbers.

maximusveritas

Thraeryn,
I'm pretty sure 2wolves was being sarcastic there.

2wolves

The /sarcasm pseudo tag did not make it into view. My bad. I'm less than adequately educated when it comes to the web.

2Wolves

chavos

This is damning not just of Faux News, but our system as a whole. You can't govern yourself rationally if you aren't responding to the actual situation. scary...

Thraeryn

Oh, thank God. Sorry about that.

Sparhawk

Definitely something that could use some more publicity.

A person is supposed to be gratified when their gut instinct is confirmed, but this just makes me sick to my stomach.

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"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

Arc101

I wonder which politician Fox News supports. Fortunately in England we have the BBC which by law has to be impartial, which means Blair really hates them.

2wolves

Bush and the neo-cons are the Faux News favorites. Video hummers all 'round when they show W.

Rupurt (sp?) Murdock is a huge Republican contributor.

2Wolves

Arc101

Does not surprise me, in England he owns a news channel called Sky News. It is a joke, it is so incredibly biased. Very pro-war, pro Israel, pro big business. It is scary the stuff they put on that channel. Fortunately most people don’t take his channel seriously, and it has very low viewing figures.

rgr22j

Rupert Murdoch, an Australian, is the man you're looking for. He himself does not donate much; his contributions include donations to John Kerry and Edward Markey. However, the News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, does donate heavily, 90% of which goes to Republicans. Ironically, just over 75% of contributions that come from people employed by News Corporation go to Democrats. In a similar irony, while Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream employees most likely donate to Democrats, the Unilever Corporation, the parent company of Ben&Jerry's, is a large contributor to Republicans.

Most interesting, News Corporation includes Fox News and the magazine the Weekly Standard, which routinely attack each other in their respective outlets. Apparently Rupert Murdoch is not the puppeteer behind his companies.

Impartial by law, but not in reality. Blair hates them not because they're impartial, but because traditionally the BBC is antagonistic towards any prime minister. More, to believe that the BBC is impartial just because it's "by law" is naive; reversing roles, one would not say Fox News is objective because its charter requires them to be "Fair and Balanced."

-- Alvin

Nizzle

I can't argue with your opinion of Fox, but these percentages are kind of misleading. If only 10% of the people listening to NPR were Republicans, the fact that 32% of them were misinformed doesn't amount to much.

How much of the listener-base of NPR is Republican? I don't know the answer to this, but I'm sure it's not nearly as large as its Democratic base. NPR is, in my opinion, a wonderful news source and service to this country. But I'm afraid that most Republicans would find it to have a decidedly Liberal slant.

The same goes for Fox News. Because Fox News is owned by a right wing lobbyist Rupert Murdoch and has a clear conservative agenda, nearly anyone with liberal or democratic ideals find it appalling to watch.

I think the problem here is that because Fox News is a de facto supporter of the Bush administration (because of its partisan orientation), it's going to look bad when it comes out that Bush's platform is riddled with lies and deception.

The same effect would occur, however, if a liberal-based media played lapdog to a Democratic president who then was exposed for fraud later on. In fact, I believe Anne Coulter and the rest of the lunatic fringe have a lot to say on this matter.

So I don't know that it's fair to blame Fox News for misinforming the public. I think it's important to realize that in reality, they are owned by Republican interests. So if you get information from them, it is going to have the same spin that's coming from the White House. It's up to the viewer to make a decision about the veracity of their news items.

I believe that anyone who gets their news from one source is asking to be misled. I do not make up my mind about any article I read until I read it in several places. Sometimes the omissions of one source tells a whole story in itself.

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Nizzle

maximusveritas

Yes, I was thinking the same thing when I saw that stat. I'm guessing the trend holds for other comparisons(Fox vs. print media for example), but that this one was just the most obvious.
They say: "while Bush supporters are more likely than supporters of a Democratic nominee to have misperceptions, for both groups, respondents' choices of news sources make a significant difference in how prevalent misperceptions are."

Yes, I agree with this and would have liked to have seen this report do a comparison of those who get their news from one source versus those who get it from multiple sources. I suspect the level of misconception would go down for the multiple source group (unless their sources were Fox and the NY Post or something like that). Unfortunately, according to this poll, only 30% of the polling group said they got their news from multiple sources.

Nizzle

I think it'd be interesting to make practical comparisons of printed and televised media. Many televised news shows compete for viewers. They are on at the same time for the most part (right after prime time sitcoms), and people that get their news from the television exclusively cannot easily watch multiple sources. If you watch Fox because it's on after Simpsons or whatever, you probably won't see anything else.

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Nizzle