Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed

A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!

Re:Observation Bias

[wygit]

Probably.
The difference is that MSNBC management hasn't, (or at least hasn't been caught) sending orders to staff to:

"refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012150004 [mediamatters.org]

or to use the phrase "government option" instead of "public option" when reporting about the health care plan, because more people react negatively to the former.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-12-09/how-fox-news-spun-the-health-care-debate/ [thedailybeast.com]

While quite a few people compare Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly, I don't think there's any comparison over how much news bias is shown at the two networks overall.

Re:Fox News is fine...for news

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

People have to separate the channel as a whole from the actual news shows. Their actual news is fairly decent and objective. The rest of the shows on that channel are pure columnist style speculation and opinion however.

There have been numerous instances that make me disagree with this. The Newscorp organization pushes disinformation for profit. For example, the news program regularly reports that there are "reports of..." reports which are simply quoting what the lunatics in Fox News talk shows say. They don't bother to look into it or debunk, it, they just report it like it is credible news. And then there is corporate ethics. As far as I know, Fox is the only news corporation that went to court and argued that it was their first amendment right to fire reporters for refusing to knowingly lie about the dangers of drugs produced by one of their advertisers. And they're right, they do have the right to fire those reporters and lie to the public or bury the story... but that completely destroys their credibility as a news channel and that of any program they carry.

Basically, while there is a lot of bias and poor research going on in US media today, Fox is actually worse than all the others and this study reflects some of that. Frankly I think the only reason to anyone would trust anything seen on the Fox news channel is ignorance about what kind of an organization is running the show.

Re:Say what you mean.

[PhxBlue]

1) Fox News makes its viewers less informed. (What headline said, which is impossible.)

Clearly you've never watched Glenn Beck.

Re:Seriously?

[daveschroeder]

Not only that, but if you look at the actual study [worldpublicopinion.org], even non-FOX News viewers believe a lot of crazy stuff, and it's more indicative the personal biases and beliefs of people who choose to watch FOX News, not that FOX News "makes you stupid".

You might find this study [ucla.edu] an interesting read.

Notable:

"All of the news outlets except Fox News Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABCs World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News Special Report is the most centrist."

and

"Based on sentences as the level of observation (the results of which are listed in Table 8), the Drudge Report is the most centrist, Fox News Special Report is second, ABC World News Tonight is third, and CBS Evening is last.

Given that the conventional wisdom is that the Drudge Report and Fox News are conservative news outlets, this ordering might be surprising. Perhaps more surprising is the degree to which the mainstream press is liberal. The results of Table 8 show that the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and CBS Evening News are not only liberal, they are closer to the average Democrat in Congress (who has a score of 74.1) than they are to the median of the whole House (who has a score of 39.0). ...the New York Times is twice as far from the center as Fox News Special Report, to gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading the New York Times. ...Our results contrast strongly with the prior expectations of many others. It is easy to find quotes from prominent journalists and academics who claim that there is no systematic bias among media outlets in the U.S. ... The main conclusion of our paper is that our results simply reject such claims."

Keep in mind that they are ONLY looking at the evening news shows; if you included the opinion/editorial shows from FOX News, which constitutes nearly all of the evening/prime-time programming, I'm not sure what would happen to the results... ;-)

Re:Seriously?

[bberens]

Here's a 2007 interview of Ron Paul on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12224561 [npr.org]
Here's one from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/25/politics/politicalplayers/main3412826.shtml [cbsnews.com]

I stopped bothering to search after that. If Ron Paul was good for ratings, he'd get more coverage.

Re:Seriously?

[Capt_Morgan]

The people that wrote that report might want to look up the word liberal in the dictionary. The democratic party isn't even close to being "liberal". They, like the republicans, are authoritarian statists....

Re:Seriously?

[siride]

"biased" is the word you are looking for.

Re:Seriously?

[dkleinsc]

Besides the many other good suggestions, I'd highly recommend Salon [salon.com], and Glenn Greenwald in particular. You might also try The Nation [thenation.com], although it can stray into bleeding-heart territory at times.

You can also learn a heck of a lot by reading foreign news media, such as the BBC or Al Jazeera.

Re:Sheesh

[Kenja]

The thing to keep in mind is that what people think of as "Fox News" is not Fox News. The actual news program only runs about two hours a day. The rest is commentary disguised as news. However, if pressed on the subject, Fox will tell you that its not "news" programming.

Re:Seriously?

[spun]

Joe Scarborough is a host on MSNBC. Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, is rabidly right wing. There are no liberals at all on Fox News. MSNBC hosts a few shows that have a liberal bias. The network itself is not liberal.

Re:Seriously?

[ByOhTek]

Several of the items clearly demonstrate belief in incorrect information (the last four items listed are good examples), but there were several that aren't so simple, two in particular:

# 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
# 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse

1) For the first - you cannot know what would happen if the stimulus was not put in place - more investing could occur, and more people could have gotten jobs. In my opinion - the stiumulus probably did more good than harm in the job front, but I certainly can't say the for certain until I get access to an alternative universe that was identical up until the stimulus legislation.

2) The second one - Again, there are many ways of estimating the economy, some will suggest better, some will suggest worse. The unemployment index, IMHO, is garbage, especially when the timeframe you can obtain unemployment increases. This is probably what they are basing it on, and the increase in unemployment actually matches quite well with the increase in time people can receive unemployment benefits. Still with something as complex as the economy, better or worse can very easily be in the eye of the beholder. So, this is also quite subjective.

Re:Seriously?

[MagusSlurpy]

FTFA:

Daily consumers of MSNBC and public broadcasting (NPR and PBS) were higher (34 points and 25 points respectively) in [incorrectly] believing that it was proven that the US Chamber of Commerce was spending money raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates. Daily watchers of network TV news broadcasts were 12 points higher in believing that TARP was signed into law by President Obama, and 11 points higher in believing that most Republicans oppose TARP.

So basically the real story here is that if you watch television news, you are more misinformed than if you don't. Thanks for the non-partisan spin, guys.

Re:Seriously?

[ScentCone]

I can't think of any examples where MSNBC hosts openly shilled, on the air, for political candidates

Really? Were you paying any attention during the last presedential campaign season? Now, I can understand why you might be so unable to watch Keith Olbermann that you've never actually seen him in action, but if you had watched him (say, for any of several randomly picked broadcasts during the election), you'd see that you're simply wrong on the facts. Or are you thinking that when one of their employees, like Rachel Maddow, spends a lot of her on-air energy to try to ridicule one of the candidates in an election, that the candidate's opponent isn't getting the benefit of her very partisan handiwork?

FOXNews has a problem not all of libertarianism

[linzeal]

When was the last time Nozick had anything printed of his besides his Anarchy, State and Utopia [amazon.com]? Do you even know who Nozick is, or do you get your libertarian views secondhand? Because that is what this survey is indicting you for, a lack of engaging with the source material, of understanding the nature of what is going on, not from any particular ideological viewpoint but understanding that is based on the bare facts. Foxnews gets the facts wrong, over and over again, Reason, The National Review and other libertarian and conservative news organizations don't have this problem, only Fox, that is what this study is getting at, comprehende?

Re:Oh brother

[ScentCone]

They don't profess Obama was born elsewhere - they just leave it as a "question".

What, you mean like the Fox opion/entertainment segment guy the left loves most to hate, Beck? He routinely mentions that there is no question about Obama's citizenship, and that he's every bit eligible to hold the office he's in. Is that the guy you're referring to?

Re:Sheesh

[Londovir]

Is every other question a "definite yes or no answer easily verifiable"? I don't agree with that at all.

From the actual survey, let's see some of the questions they asked people:

• Q8: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama has been handling the situation in Afghanistan? (Subjective)
• Q8b. What is your impression of what the Obama administration has done in regard to the number of US troops in Afghanistan? (Subjective>
• Q9. As you know, the American economy had a major downturn starting in the fall of 2008. Do you think that now the American economy is still getting worse, starting to recover, don't know/refused? (Subjective)
• Q11. Since January 2009 have your Federal income taxes gone up a lot, gone up a little, stayed the same, gone down a little, gone down a lot? (Subjective interpretation of factual change, which is non-defined)
• Q18. As you may know, in 2009, Congress passed a package of legislation to stimulate the economy, also known as the stimulus bill. Do you think this stimulus legislation was a good idea or a bad idea? (Subjective)
• Q32a. Do you think that, in the end, the government will recover [bailout money] none, a little, most, all? (Subjective, despite potential objective factual basis; are they questioning whether people believe the companies are obligated to pay back the money or whether people cynically expect no money to ever be repaid?)
• Q33. There is a system called “cap and trade” that is meant to reduce the emissions that cause climate change. Just based on what you know, do you favor or oppose the US adopting the cap and trade system? (Subjective)
• Q34. Do you think that MOST SCIENTISTS believe that climate change is occurring, not occurring, or evenly divided? (Subjective based upon understanding of "most" - is it strictly 50.01% or higher?)
• Q36. As you may know, a new health reform bill was signed into law earlier this year. Given what you know about the new health reform law, do you have a generally favorable or generally unfavorable opinion of it? (Subjective)
• Q37. What effect do you think the health reform law will have on the federal budget deficit over the next ten years? (Subjective)
• Q39-B143: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president? (Subjective)
• Q41. In the election that just took place on November 2nd how often did you encounter information that seemed misleading or false? (Subjective - Likert scale interpretation of what people feel constitutes "rarely")
• Q42: Do you think that the level of misleading or false information was higher than usual, lower than usual, same as usual? (Subjective)

This "poll" is so insanely poor it's not even funny. As a statistics teacher, I'm frankly thankful for things like this because it's fodder for my classroom discussions as we tear apart the problems with the poll. It's rife with bias (in the statistical sense, not in the political sense), on a variety of fronts. First off, there's potential undercoverage bias, since they "scientifically" randomly choose participants based off of telephone numbers and residential addresses - two types of situations that can typically undercover for bias. What if a person has no phone number to choose (or an unlisted/cell number)? Let's not overlook the simple possibility of people who are currently homeless - perhaps as a result of the economy being quizzed about.

Next, there's always nonresponse bias involved. They selected people and asked if they'd like to participate. From the results posted, it's impossible to tell how much nonresponse bias is present since they always lumped together "don't know / refused" for their data reports. Classically simple way of fudging how many people refuse to respond to a question.

There are a handful of potential response bias situations in the questions being asked, of course. Question #35 deals with people's belief in Obama's birthplace. However, the que

Re:Seriously?

[DrgnDancer]

Pay... cash... $20,000... What planet do you live on? There's a reason I don't drive a new car. The old one is paid for and $20,000 is a bit out of my current budget. I make good money and one or two little doctor visits like that in a five year period would completely decimate me.

The average income for a family of four in this country is $50,000 a year before taxes. Assuming that your Libertarian paradise lowers taxes to say 10%, that leave $45,000 as a median net income. So one $20,000 medical bill is approximately half of that. One serious medical problem in a family of four people could instantly and immediately take half of their income away. And that's for people with median income. 20% of the population make 20K or less a year. One serious illness just totally takes out their ENTIRE ANNUAL INCOME.

"Freedom of Choice is preferable to being treated like a child too dumb to make his/her own decisions"

That a pure platitude. It doesn't answer the question. It doesn't even address the question. Your "solution" would work for the top 5 or 10% of the wage earning public, and even for many of them it would be painful as Hell. When I make $150,000 a year I might be *able* to afford a $20K doctor's bill, but even then it would hurt.

Re:FOXNews has a problem not all of libertarianism

[PopeRatzo]

It's not FOX viewers that are stupid and misinformed. It is Americans

But since FOX is the most widely-watched cable news network, you can't rule out that there is some correlation.

What left wing?

[Burning1]

For MSNBC to have a real left wing Bias, we'd first to have a real left wing in the United States... Suffice it to say, I'm still waiting to see a communist talking head on the news.

Make no mistake... The United States has a Right Wing party and a Centrist Party. True left wingers are a fringe group in these parts.

Re:Seriously?

[otopico]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/hannity-tea-party-footage-daily-show/
http://www.examiner.com/extreme-weight-loss-in-national/sean-hannity-of-fox-news-apologizes-for-video-lies-on-anti-health-care-reform-rally

There you go.

Re:Seriously?

[spun]

The question is not whether it is biased or not, the question is, is it TRUE? Unless you have some evidence that the survey is false, you can take your ad hominem poisoning the well bullshit and stick it up your ass.

Re:FOXNews has a problem not all of libertarianism

[BKX]

The real question is: does where Obama was born even matter? That's why I don't understand the birthplace conspiracy theorists. I mean, the Constitution's Natural Born Citizen requirement just means not a Naturalized Citizen. Obama's mother was a US citizen at his birth, so Obama was born a citizen regardless of where he was born, so what's the big deal?

Re:FOXNews has a problem not all of libertarianism

[JWSmythe]

    This has got to be one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard. No, not you, you are stating the facts. It's the conspiracy nuts grasping at any conspiracy they can.

    The idea that Obama (in chronological order): ... was born in and is a citizen of another country. ... was groomed for the last 40-some years to become President of the United States. ... was not vetted by the Democratic party. ... was not vetted by any of his previous employers, associates, affiliates, political enemies, etc. ... plans to take over the world.

    is just nuts. I can make up my own list, that sounds just as plausible.

    Obama was... ... born the son of Malcolm X [goo.gl]. ... is really a reptilian alien [goo.gl]. ... was trained by senior Nazi officers in South Africa [goo.gl]. ... to take over the United States [goo.gl], ... and then take over the world [goo.gl].

    And oh my gosh, that last link explains how serious the matter really is. :)