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Fox News watchers most likely to be clueless

This data should surprise no one, but it's nice to see it proven in a scientific study. :)

If you don't take the time to read the whole article, note this:
80 percent of Fox News viewers held one misperception and 45 percent held all three. In contrast, 23 percent of those getting their news from NPR/PBS held one misperception and only 4 percent held all three.

Just to emphasize: 80 percent of Fox viewers held at least one of three factually incorrect beliefs about Iraq, while only 23 percent of NPR/PBS viewers held at least one misperception.

http://inthesetimes.com/firststone/c...id=402_0_8_0_C

Quote:

It’s old news that many Americans are know-nothings when it comes to Iraq. According to a Washington Post poll in August, 32 percent of Americans believed it was “very likely” that “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” Another poll found that 20 percent of Americans believed that “Iraq did use chemical or biological weapons in the war.”

Researchers at the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in Washington have plumbed the abyss of this ignorance. Their mission: to discover why “a substantial portion of the public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false [and that] have played a key role in generating and maintaining approval for the decision to go to war.”

From June through September, PIPA polled 3,334 people, asking them about three of “the most egregious misperceptions.”

* Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda has been found.
* Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
* World public opinion favored the United States going to war with Iraq.

The study, “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,” found that 60 percent of respondents held one or more of the three misperceptions—an ignorance that played into the Bush administration’s drumbeat for war. PIPA discovered that “among those with just one of the misperceptions, 53 percent supported the war—rising to 78 percent for two of the misperceptions and to 86 percent for those with all three.” Conversely, among those “with none of the three misperceptions,” 77 percent opposed the war.

So why did so many Americans hold opinions that were false “or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community?” the PIPA researchers wondered. Was this ignorance “a function of an individual’s source of news?”

Indeed it was. After asking respondents to name their “primary source of news,” PIPA discovered that “Fox News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions.” Conversely, an “overwhelming majority” of NPR/PBS consumers “did not have any of the three misconceptions.” (Indeed, 80 percent of Fox News viewers held one misperception and 45 percent held all three. In contrast, 23 percent of those getting their news from NPR/PBS held one misperception and only 4 percent held all three.)

The researchers point out that it is true that audiences for network news shows vary as to education and political affiliation. For example, Fox viewers are more Republican while PBS/NPR consumers are better educated and more Democratic. (They also found that Republicans and those with lower education are more likely to hold misperceptions.)

Yet source of news is still a determining factor. Of the Republicans who get their news from Fox, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 54 percent, while for Republicans who get their news from PBS/NPR the average rate is 32 percent. On the Democratic side of things, 48 percent of Democrats who watch Fox believe that the United States found a direct Iraqi link to al-Qaeda, while not a single Democrat who relies on PBS/NPR believed any such nonsense.

But “most striking,” say the PIPA researchers, is that among Fox News viewers, those who watch the “fair and balanced” network the most are the ones most likely to hold demonstrably unbalanced misperceptions.

Steven Kull, the director of PIPA and the study’s principal investigator, says, “If people are getting misperceptions, and we can empirically demonstrate that they are, then the media has a responsibility to offset that and counteract them. The media hasn’t been diligent enough in taking into account the way that perceptions and impressions are formed around a quite significant public policy issue.”

As for Fox, Kull says “research shows that Fox gives more airtime to the administration’s representatives and that may be one of the key explanations why Fox viewers have these misperceptions.”

This article sounds very unbiased and fair. Journalistic integrity :cool:

Actually its an interesting study.

The major flaw though is the only misconceptions they looked at were the PRO war misconceptions.

They didn't ask questions like: Were UN sanctions starving Iraqi Children? or Did US warplanes target civilians?

So what the study was looking for is who is most likely to have a pro-war misconception, not who is most likely to HAVE a misconception about the war.

Well, that was interesting. It is surprising how easy it is for news sources to spread misinfomation like this. I am still thinking that an internaitional independent news watch organization would be one of the greates steps we can make towards a better world.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ustwo
Actually its an interesting study.

The major flaw though is the only misconceptions they looked at were the PRO war misconceptions.

They didn't ask questions like: Were UN sanctions starving Iraqi Children? or Did US warplanes target civilians?

So what the study was looking for is who is most likely to have a pro-war misconception, not who is most likely to HAVE a misconception about the war.

I don't even understand your point. Your last sentence doesn't make sense to me.

If the questions you ask could create an environment where the American public is ok with something like war, then they would be on par with the questions that were asked.

Why so quick to change the subject?

The point is that these misconceptions have helped put us in an untenable spot in Iraq right now. Changing the subject to the pollsters bias (if any) doesn't change the fact of the findings.

This is so typical of modern debate. Don't like the point of the argument? Can't refute the facts? Hey! Just change the subject, or throw dirt on the person presenting.

Criminy. The sad thing, of course, is that it works. Just like implying that Iraq was involved in 9/11 enough times works too...

Fox News is a joke. Here in England Murdoch runs Sky News which is much the same as Fox, but the viewing figures are very low. No one takes Sky seriously as it is more interested in propaganda than reporting the true facts.

Quote:

Originally posted by boatin
I don't even understand your point. Your last sentence doesn't make sense to me.

If the questions you ask could create an environment where the American public is ok with something like war, then they would be on par with the questions that were asked.

Why so quick to change the subject?

The point is that these misconceptions have helped put us in an untenable spot in Iraq right now. Changing the subject to the pollsters bias (if any) doesn't change the fact of the findings.

This is so typical of modern debate. Don't like the point of the argument? Can't refute the facts? Hey! Just change the subject, or throw dirt on the person presenting.

Criminy. The sad thing, of course, is that it works. Just like implying that Iraq was involved in 9/11 enough times works too...

No, the study was flawed. It wasn't 'who is most likely to have misconceptions about the war' it was 'who is most likely to have pro war misconceptions'. And *gasp* a republican is most likely to have a pro-war misconception, and *gasp* a republican was somewhat more likely to watch fox news, there is a shocker! On the other hand they didn't ask about any anti-war misconceptions. Its a rather basic concept when you set up an experimental design for a subject like this.

TRY not to let your political bias cloud the scientific part of your mind.

Quote:

Originally posted by Arc101
Fox News is a joke. Here in England Murdoch runs Sky News which is much the same as Fox, but the viewing figures are very low. No one takes Sky seriously as it is more interested in propaganda than reporting the true facts.

The BBC's portrayal of the war was so distorted from reality that they stopped showing it on UK warships in favor of Sky News.

The point of the whole thing is that while none of the so-called "misconceptions "has been proved - neither have they been disproved. I get most of my news from Fox - I don't trust any of the others nearly as much - CNN has proved that it isn't truthful about too many things and the three major networks news coverage is totally biased - until the "misconceptions" are either proved or disproved they are a non-issue. Oh yeah, BBC and Al Jazerra are too much alike - I wouldn't trust either one of them in anything they report.

Quote:

The BBC's portrayal of the war was so distorted from reality that they stopped showing it on UK warships in favor of Sky News.

Ooh I'm sure that's the real reason and not that Blair wanted the dissenting voice silenced among his troops in favor of one that reported nothing but positive stories to the troops.

Fox and Sky are the dregs of the news world. Producers at Fox are regularly told they have to put a conservative slant to every story, even the hard news segments
ex... the pro-environmentalists aren't allowed to have the last word, nixxing a crawl that says Hans Blix- "WMD have still not been found in Iraq" etc.

Here's a big story on that exact thing.

http://www.poynter.org/forum/?id=letters

Quote:

Originally posted by Liquor Dealer
The point of the whole thing is that while none of the so-called "misconceptions "has been proved - neither have they been disproved.

disproved?! They were asking about the status right now.

* Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda has been found.

none have been found, thats a Fact! perhaps you find a link someday (I doubt it) but currently you haven't found any links. But still people belive that a link was found, thats false.

* Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

none have been found, thats a Fact! perhaps you find some weapons (I doubt it) but currently you haven't found any WMD. Still people (reps and fox watchers) also belive that those Weapons have been found thats also false!

* World public opinion favored the United States going to war with Iraq.

thats also a fact.

So what kind of "disproves" are you talking about?

Quote:

Originally posted by Ustwo
The major flaw though is the only misconceptions they looked at were the PRO war misconceptions.

They didn't ask questions like: Were UN sanctions starving Iraqi Children? or Did US warplanes target civilians?

the difference between the point you mentioned and the questions asked in the survey is that the survey asked clear yes/no questions.

*Were UN sanctions starving Iraqi Children?
not the sanctions but saddam did this, but it is unquestionable that sanctions hit the civillian population first. some medical supplies could not been sold to iraq due to "dual use". that certainly had a huge effect on the population.

* Did US warplanes target civilians?
this quetion is also not easy to answer with a yes or a no. Do you talk about intentionally targeted? that would be certainly "No" (i hope) but civillians were targeted accidently and civilian areas have been hit by bombs.

So your questions would produce no good result
Plus like someone already said
"Don't like the point of the argument? Can't refute the facts? Hey! Just change the subject, or throw dirt on the person presenting."

nice try...

Quote:

Originally posted by Liquor Dealer
The point of the whole thing is that while none of the so-called "misconceptions "has been proved - neither have they been disproved. I get most of my news from Fox - I don't trust any of the others nearly as much - CNN has proved that it isn't truthful about too many things and the three major networks news coverage is totally biased - until the "misconceptions" are either proved or disproved they are a non-issue. Oh yeah, BBC and Al Jazerra are too much alike - I wouldn't trust either one of them in anything they report.

Um, no, LD, that's not the way the question was asked. People were asked if:
* Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda has been found.
* Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
* World public opinion favored the United States going to war with Iraq.

All of these are facts about the present, not some sort of conjecture about whether we WILL find weapons of mass destruction, etc.

To the question "Have weapons of mass destruction been found in Iraq?" there is only one factually correct answer: no.

Quote:

Ananova:

'Angry' Ark Royal crew switch off BBC

The BBC has been axed from the nation's flagship naval vessel following claims of pro-Iraqi bias.

The Navy says it has switched off News 24 aboard HMS Ark Royal after complaints by the crew.

It is one of a handful of task force ships which receives live TV direct from Britain.

Rolling news plus two entertainment channels are beamed into the warship.

A BBC correspondent has been on board but the crew say they have no gripe with his reports.

However they were annoyed by the comments of presenters and commentators reporting on the carrier's Sea King tragedy a fortnight ago.

The BBC suggested poor levels of maintenance played a hand in the deaths of seven fliers.

Sailors also believe the news organisation places more faith in Iraqi reports than information coming from British or Allied sources.

One senior rating said: "The BBC always takes the Iraqis' side. It reports what they say as gospel but when it comes to us it questions and doubts everything the British and Americans are reporting. A lot of people on board are very unhappy."

Ark has replaced the BBC with rival broadcaster Sky News.

Story filed: 10:25 Tuesday 8th April 2003

The BBC claims of course they switched it back, either way its quite funny. Watching the BBC made you think the war was being lost, and every claim made by Iraq about captured pilots, and downed aircraft was accepted without comment.

So apparently former Fox News producer Charles Reina has just come out with the charge that Fox executives issue a daily memo to their employees in order to help bend their reporting to the right. If true, these memos would be in startling contrast to the internal memo that the LA Times Editor sent to his reporters which ordered them to become more objective. Right-wingers roundly used that memo as evidence of "liberal bias". I'm interested to hear what they have to say about this.

http://www.latimes.com/features/life...ines-lifestyle

Quote:

Miles from 'fair and balanced'

A veteran producer this week alleged that Fox News executives issue a daily memorandum to staff on news coverage to bend the network's reporting into conformity with management's political views, refocusing attention on the partisan bias of America's most watched cable news operation.

The charges by Charlie Reina, 55, whose six-year tenure at Fox ended April 9, first surfaced Wednesday in a letter he posted on an influential Web site (www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45) maintained by Jim Romenesko for the Poynter Institute, an organization that promotes journalistic education and ethics.

Concerns about Fox, which styles its news coverage as "fair and balanced," begin with its owner, Australian-born Rupert Murdoch. The corporate boards and family investors who control most of the American news media generally feel obliged to maintain a wall of separation between news and editorial opinion. Murdoch, by contrast, operates in the style of the traditional Fleet Street proprietors, who dismiss such distinctions as inconvenient fictions.

And as a deeply conservative man, he is willing to put his money where his politics are: Murdoch, a naturalized U.S. citizen, subsidizes publication of the Weekly Standard, one of the country's most influential right-wing journals. According to a forthcoming book by the New Yorker's Ken Auletta, he loses as much as $40 million a year maintaining the New York Post as an outlet of conservatism in Manhattan.

As Fox's founding president, he hired Roger Ailes, a shrewd Republican political operative who earned a well-founded reputation for bare-knuckle campaigning while working for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As one of the architects of the elder George Bush's media strategy in his campaign for president against Democratic rival Michael Dukakis, Ailes helped devise the notorious Willie Horton commercials. As he told Time magazine in August 1988, "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

The late Lee Atwater, another Bush aide, described Ailes as having "two speeds — attack and destroy." Before joining Fox, where he serves now as chairman, Ailes produced Rush Limbaugh's short-lived television talk show.

According to Reina's letter, "Daily life at [Fox] is all about management politics....Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First, it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that [Fox] is, to a large extent, 'Roger's Revenge' against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are nonunion, with no protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss."

Fox News spokesman Rob Zimmerman told The Times that "these accusations are the rantings of a bitter, disgruntled former employee. It's unfortunate that Charlie's career ended the way it did, but we wish him well." Asked whether Reina's quotations from the memos were inaccurate or taken out of context, Zimmerman said, "All we are saying is that these are false accusations." The Times' request to speak with Ailes was denied: "Roger is not addressing this and is not available," Zimmerman said.

Reina, who told The Times he left Fox in a dispute over salary and workload — not politics — hardly comes across as a knee-jerk liberal. He is at pains, for example, to say that he believes his former employer's cable rivals — CNN and MSNBC — also air news reports riven with bias on both ends of the political spectrum. At Fox, he not only produced the network's weekly media criticism show, "News-Watch," but also a series of specials on Newt Gingrich and a talk show with conservative religious commentator Cal Thomas.

Still, Reina, whose 30-year career includes stints at the Associated Press, ABC News and CBS, said Fox's ideological problems begin with Ailes.

"Roger is such a high-profile and partisan political operative that everyone in the newsroom knows what his political feelings are and acts accordingly. I'd never worked in a newsroom like that," he said in an interview. "Never. At ABC, for example, I never knew what management or my bosses' political views were, much less felt pressure from them to make things come out a certain way. I'm talking about news bias, and I never experienced it there. At CBS or the AP, if a word got in that suggested bias — liberal or conservative — it was taken out.

"At Fox it was all about viewpoint. I'm not talking about the nighttime personalities. I'm talking about the news report. Fox executives will say their network only appears conservative because it is fair, when everyone else is liberal and biased. That's bull. Fox doesn't 'seem' conservative and Republican. It is conservative and Republican."

In his letter, Reina wrote that "the roots of [Fox's] day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo" written by John Moody, the network's vice president for news, and "distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it. The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view consistently comes across on [Fox]....

"For instance, from the March 20th memo: 'There is something utterly incomprehensible about [U.N. Secretary-General] Kofi Annan's remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are 'with the Iraqi people.' One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought.' Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only 'food for thought,' but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General's remarks as 'utterly incomprehensible'?....

"One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be 'whining' about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting — simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital....

"These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them."

Av Westin, a longtime ABC news executive who is now executive director of the National Television Academy, examined Reina's letter and said: "Nothing about this surprises me. The uniform smirks and body language that are apparent in Fox's reports throughout the day reflect an operation that is quite tightly controlled. The fact that young and inexperienced producers acquiesce to that control by pulling stories is further evidence that nonjournalistic forces are at work in that newsroom.

"Roger runs the place with an iron hand and he was put in place there by Murdoch, who selected him for his politics. In that sense, what's happened at Fox is a carry-over from all Murdoch's print publications, where the publisher's politics and editorial preference is reflected in the news hole to an extent that isn't true anywhere else in American journalism."

Reina is out of television news these days, supporting himself in New York with a small woodworking business.

Looking back on his time with Fox, his greatest concern is for its young staff. "Many of them wanted to be on television but not necessarily in news. They haven't had the benefit of traditional journalistic training, so they're easily molded.

"Time after time I watched what management's politics did to the young anchors. As they near the time to get their own show, the hair gets blonder and the bias gets clearer."

Original Letter from Reina along with the response from Fox News VP-News Operations Sharri Berg can be found here (scroll down 4 letters):
http://poynter.org/forum/default.asp...Srt=&DGPCrPg=2

Quote:

Originally posted by maximusveritas
So apparently former Fox News producer Charles Reina has just come out with the charge that Fox executives issue a daily memo to their employees in order to help bend their reporting to the right. If true, these memos would be in startling contrast to the internal memo that the LA Times Editor sent to his reporters which ordered them to become more objective.

You mean the one sent out because the LA times was so far slanted left that it was hurting them?

The point is that while the LA Times brass tries to stamp out the individual left-leaning biases of its reporters, Fox News execs encourage their reporters to bias their reporting to the right. There's a big difference there. Some news organizations appear liberal because most journalists are liberal and their biases can never be completely stamped out. Fox News, on the other hand, appears biased to the right because those in charge are actively trying to make it biased to the right.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ustwo
You mean the one sent out because the LA times was so far slanted left that it was hurting them?

This is, again, classic. Don't like the message? Can't refute the point? Hey! Let's change the subject! Where can I sling dirt now?

Simple facts: The LA Times urged objectivity, and Fox doesn't.

Spin it, man, spin it.

As for this:

Quote:

Originally posted by Ustwo
TRY not to let your political bias cloud the scientific part of your mind.

Be careful about living in a glass house...

Pacifier and Harmless Rabit said it better than I could. How about you respond to the points they made? Hmmmm?

You mean the objective LA Times that brought up a woman to claim she had been fondled by Arnold Swartzeneggar but also forgot to mention that she was the wife of the first political to hire GRay Davis? That kind of objective?

FEL, you should read the post above yours. Paraphrase it for me. Please, say something relevant.

This thread has become a useless debate,
about unimportant features that could be taken either way.
Mostly negative.

Thus it is being locked.