Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed 1352
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
MSNBC isn't an institution with liberals like it is many for hardline conservatives, though. The very partisan left tends to resonate with certain trawls of the blogosphere rather than tie themselves to the radio or TV, I think. A lot of liberals like Olbermann and Maddow but seem most likely to watch them when someone links a clip of their shows on the HuffPo, rather than actually tuning in to watch those programs on a real television. That's also not counting some of the station's moderate conservatives, like Joe Scarborough.
If there's any show that really draws a constant audience of liberals to live broadcast, it's probably Stewart and Colbert.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
What news media outlet exists for a frustrated rational progressive with strong constitutional tendencies completely dissatisfied with every party?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since TV news is how most people become informed, I would argue that on the correlation to causation scale, this would lean towards the causation side.
Re:Oh brother (Score:4, Interesting)
They're also primarily responsible for the complete nonsense that the 2008 economic implosion was due to Fannie Mae => Democrats => let's keep deregulating and lowering taxes. Again raised as questions, where counter-questions or completely disproving info is simply ignored.
And the news segments are only slightly less bad than the pundit commentary. It's as much about what they *don't* report as they do. For instance, my parents who are unfortunately possessed by Fox News had no idea that Texas is $25 billion in debt - because Fox talks constantly about California's woes and pushes no-state-income-tax Texas as some kind of paradise. Or the CONSTANT number of times the title card beneath someone is "somehow" the wrong party - so a Republican in trouble is shown as a "Democrat". Funny how these mistakes are always in the GOP's favor.
All mass media is not to be trusted. But Fox is to be trusted last of all. They really are objectively the worst.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Interesting)
Hear hear. To claim that MSNBC is somehow "just as bad" as Fox News is to invoke a false analogy [wikipedia.org]. Instead of doing journalism, Fox News arguably is trying to destroy it [outfoxed.org].
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
The "amount" of government is not a quantity. Libertarians who believe that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, such as Rand Paul, Senator-elect from Kentucky, are essentially saying that private businesses have the right to use state and local law enforcement to exclude black people. After 1965, the federal government prohibited businesses from excluding black people. Which situation has more government, and which has more freedom?
Also, "The larger government is, the fewer choices the individual has" is not obvious and requires a ton of proof. For example, does the existence of publicly funded TV and radio stations decrease the number of sources for TV or radio programming?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."
OK, I've seen this Libertarian objection to the new Health Care law before, and I have a question about it. What do you consider the viable alternative? Before you answer, let me lay out the facts and assumptions that frame the question as I see it:
1) People get sick or injured. Often out of the blue, and occasionally seriously. The risk is lower for younger people, but even there it's not zero. I work with a guy who got cancer at 27. Thankfully he's insured. I knew a guy in college who had a stroke, again, thankfully insured. The older you get, the more likely and common these occurrence become. This a fact, i don't think there's any arguing it.
2) Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die." As evidence for this fact I present a right wing invention: The Death Panel. We were told that if "Obamacare" passed our oldest and least able people would face the horrors of a "Death Panel" deciding who should and should not be treated. People were outraged, and it was the single most effective anti-healthcare argument out there. It was also complete bullshit, but hey. So again, our society will not actually tolerate a completely market driven Healthcare system. As soon as the old and infirm start dying for lack of care, something will have to change. This speaks well of our society, by the way. This is obviously an assumption, but I think you'd have a hard time countering it.
3) Care cost money. Particularity, the older and/or sicker you are, the more it costs. *Someone* has to pay for the care of those who can't pay for themselves, at least assuming that we accept my assumption "2" above. The options are: the patient (who obviously can't or they wouldn't be in this position), the Hospital (who will quickly go out of business in this model), or the Government (who usually wind up footing the bill one way or the other). Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations. This is a fact.
Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance? The current model is "People who can afford it, and want it, pay for insurance. Everyone else doesn't pay for insurance and either government insures them (medicare or medicaid), or when they do get sick they go to the hospital and build up phenomenal and unplayable debts that are eventually either forgiven by relief (bankruptcy) or just never paid." So either the hospital (through unpaid bills), the government (through Medicare/caid) or the patient (through insurance) pays for the care. This model has seen health care cost increase significantly faster than any other cost in modern life.
Forcing everyone to get insurance put people in the position of (mostly) paying for their own care, with the government chipping in to cover some of the bill for the poor. The end result is that people are getting care, they are primarily paying for it themselves, the government has a predictable expenditure structure, and hospitals always get paid. It's taking a choice away from you, true, you have to get insurance, but before when you had that choice you risked someone elves choices everyday. Because if you don't have insurance, and you get sick, someone is going to have to pay for it. And it probably won't be you.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. That is a funny little comment that has no basis in fact or reality, and is typically spewed by people with left leaning bias in the first place.
Reality has no bias, You don't work, you go hungry. Unless you apply a left leaning bias to this which applies "and hunger is wrong" qualitative view point. The moment one applies a judgment to "reality" their view of reality is altered.
The eye altering, alters all - William Blake.
The point being, every one of your views that views reality with left leaning bias, alters that reality for you, so that it appears to be left leaning.
And the fact that I have to explain how reality has no bias, only proves my point further.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're missing the point of my example.
If you want to discriminate in your place of business, then you are relying on the government to enforce that discrimination. If a large number of discriminated-against people attempt to patronize businesses that discriminate, you more or less require a constant police presence. That is more government than a situation where anyone can patronize any business, and police presence is unnecessary.
The point is that your one-dimensional big/small government metric is not useful in a lot of situations.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
My SF NPR stations regularly interviews third party candidates before each election (the democrats and republicans almost always only want to debate only each other, if they want to debate at all). It actually makes the libertarians look good because they're on at the same time as complete goofballs. Hot button topics generally get panelists from opposite sides of an issue, and even in an uber-liberal San Francisco base you get call ins from listeners on both sides of the issue. It tries harder to be unbiased than any other news outlet I've seen. When I hear thoughtful reasoned discussion from a conservative point of view, I tend to hear it on NPR more than anywhere else. If I want foaming at the mouth conservative viewpoints, Fox News is the better outlet for it.
NPR only gets 5.8% of funds from federal/state/local governments. It is not at all shy about sticking it to the government when they want to.
Re:Nobody bothers to read the original opinion pol (Score:0, Interesting)
Well done, sir.
I wonder . . . . could it be that the vast majority of Slashdot readers are white males, college educated, under the age of 30, living in the United States? If that is so, then we can safely predict the slant that will be observed in an empirical assessment of their political views. This group reliably expresses political opinions that are left of center, with party affiliation in the U.S. being, of course, Democratic. The rest falls into place. Man-made global warming, income redistribution, entitlement spending, growth of government, one-world government, Bush derangement syndrome, "there were no weapons of mass destruction," and so on.
And the Trade Centers were an inside job. Almost forgot that.