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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!
Correlation != Causation. This is basic guys, cmon.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Can you mod an entire article "troll"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
FOX also makes sure to point out any 'controversy' in science stories.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/fox_news_bureau_chief_told_staff_to_cast_doubt_on_climate_change.php?ref=fpb
This is just the result of their policies. They probably designed it this way to make people want to watch/read more FOX news. If you are unsure about something going on today you try to learn more, and you learn what's going on in the world by watching the news, right?
Worldpublicopinion.org founded by Pipa.org
http://www.pipa.org/sponsors.htm
Their sponsors are a who's who of liberal politics.
Sponsors
PIPA's activities have been supported by:
* Rockefeller Foundation
* Rockefeller Brothers Fund
* Tides Foundation
* Ford Foundation
* German Marshall Fund of the United States
* Compton Foundation
* Carnegie Corporation
* Benton Foundation
* Ben and Jerry's Foundation
* University of Maryland Foundation
* Circle Foundation
* JEHT Foundation
* Stanley Foundation
* Ploughshares Fund
* Calvert Foundation
* Secure World Foundation
* Oak Foundation
* United States Institute of Peace
There is a difference, and a significant one at that, between all of the following statements:
1) Fox News makes its viewers less informed. (What headline said, which is impossible.)
2) Viewers of Fox News tend to be less informed. (What headline meant.)
3) Fox News makes its viewers more mis-informed. (What summary said.)
4) Viewers of Fox News tend to be more mis-informed. (What summary should have said.)
5) Viewers of Fox News tend to believe stuff that I think is hogwash. (What summary meant.)
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
That a survey designed year after year to bash Fox News isn't at all biased in design, intent, delivery, execution and conclusion.
Good job liberals .. more FUD for the fodder. Mixing cool aid is Fun !!
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
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.
Bullshit. The "News" shows are just as bad as the "editorials." It is all propaganda.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
a large part of the Faux News audience is folks who think they know it all already, and are only seeking reassurance of their obvious superiority.
they won't be angered by this, because they are only good for words of one or two syllables. just nod at the rest.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm not saying all the viewers of Fox news are moronic idiots...
It's just that a lot of moronic idiots watch Fox News.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
...having already made up their minds and not wishing to be confused with the facts, they go there to have their preconceptions re-enforced.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
By defining truth in their own way, they are causing a correlation. Consider this 'result'...
"72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit"
Apparently, the inferrence to be made is that the health reform law will not increase the deficit. This cannot be supported by facts because the law hasn't even been implemented yet. There are still regulations to be made. The CBO did do an estimate, but it stopped short of showing the long term effects. And this doesn't even address the necessary changes to the law whose need will become clear as people decide not to purchase the mandated coverage and instead pay the much cheaper fine.
Anyone who claims that the health reform laws will not affect the deficit is at least as big of an idiot as Steve Ducey.
Wow! Amazing, Fox viewers do not have the same opinions about various topics as those who watch networks which favor the expansion of state power.
I do not watch Fox News (or any other television news). However, most of the things that they use as examples of Fox News viewers being stupid are opinions, not facts. The very first one they list is the large number of Fox News viewers who think that the stimulus legislation lost jobs. Well, the U.S. economy has lost quite a few jobs since the stimulus legislation was passed, so it is perfectly legitimate to blame the stimulus legislation. However, that is an opinion. There are people who believe that the U.S. economy would have lost more jobs if the stimulus was not enacted. That is also an opinion.
Basically, the site in question calls their opinions "facts" and then belittles those who disagree with those "facts".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Obama was born in the US, however he moved to Indonesia and then back to the US in his teen years, he has spent a couple million so far keeping the same sorta college records sealed that are available to anyone looking into Bill Clinton's or George Bush's college years.
There is some though that Obama put down "Indonesian" on his college aid forms to game the system as grants to foreign students were much more attractive than grants for citizen students.
I am not a "birther" nor do I really care where someone was pushed out of their mom's va-jay-jay. But we need to see his college financial aid forms because he could have lied about his citizenship status on the student aid forms meaning he either...
1. Previously Denounced his citizenship, making him ineligible for the office of POTUS.
or.
2. Gamed the system illegally for his own ends, which shows a pattern of not giving a shit about the law and would be a nice black mark on his record and degrade the trust the American people have in him.
So why has Obama spent 1-2 million dollars keeping records sealed that haven't been for previous presidents?
In socialist Germany, we have government sponsored universal health care that is alot cheaper and more efficient than in the U.S. I can go to the doc any time I want to and not have to worry about being able to pay the bills.
In socialist Germany, we have a state funded independent news organization that reports important facts from around the world from an unbiased standpoint, instead of reporting on the lives of teenaged girl-stars or the most recent, spectacular highway robbery.
In socialist Germany, the state grants us legal protection from getting fired without good reason, unemployment benefits, parental benefits, grants for families with children, education sponsorships, the list goes on.
In socialist Germany we have low unemployment and a trade surplus.
You know, capitalism isn't everything. Basically, the extreme capitalism that the Republican Party and Fox News preach only means that the power is transferred from the government to the corporations and their owners. Problem is that corporations have even less interest in the public than the government. Corporations only want to make more money.
The vast majority of europeans are astounded by the fact that so many americans are so spiteful and disapproving of the best president they've had in a long time. Obama is fighting for reforms that intend to help the middle and lower income classes and yet you people demonstrate against him to keep the system in place that clearly favors the wealthy. And all of this while juggling the tremendous deficit and two wars that Obama inherited from his precursor, and an economic crisis sparked by just these wealthy allmighties which the taxpayer had to step in for.
Us here on the old continent can't understand why in the world anyone would ever vote for the Republican party that so clearly is the political wing of the wealthiest 5%. The only thing that can explain this discrepancy between european and the broad american view on what is going on in your own country, is the tremendous influence held by misinforming "News" Corporations, such as Fox News.
So is the iPhone.
It has the most users. One could argue that, among the technically challenged (i.e stupid), iPhone is more popular. Stupid iphone users > stupid other smartphone users.
Thus, iPhone is the #1 choice of stupid people.
That is not to say that all iPhone users are stupid...
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
Thank you Slashdot for finally giving me the needed push to stop visiting here. When tripe like this is "reported" here as news I know I'm wasting my time. And there seems to be more and more of this.
The "News" shows are just as bad as the "editorials." It is all propaganda.
And you think that any other 'news' shows are any different?
Yes, I do. I don't think that other news shows' editorial staff makes specific decisions on the wording to be used on every story covering a particular issue, like global warming or health care reform. I do not think any other news source has ever stated in a memo that reporters are never to use the phrase "The public option" and must always refer to it as "The government-run option."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Good observation.
And here's what I observed: World Public Opinion is sponsored by the Liberal-leaning, socialist-loving University of Maryland (the state where 70% of the government is Democrat)(and 90% of professors are too). So the survey bashing Libertarian-leaning FOX viewers is as unsurprising as a Microsoft-funded survey showing Google Chrome is insecure. BOTH surveys are meaningless bullshit, not worth the paper they are printed on.
Commodore64_love's posts are 70% libertarian and 90% conservative. He is biased so you don't need listen to anything he says, even if it is true. His posts are meaningless bullshit, not worth the electrons they are displayed with.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What astonishes me is that so few people even bother to "click through" to find the original source of this claim, even though it's so terribly easy to do so on the web (due to hyperlinks).
This slashdot story is a "summary of a summary" and is several degrees removed from the original source.
The news story upon which this is based, was taken from a lefty news source (alter.net), and is hysterically distorted. The original poll does not claim that "Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources." Nor does the original poll claim that Fox news causes viewers to become misinformed. Quite the opposite, the original poll claims that Fox news viewers are less informed about some issues, whereas viewers of lefty news sources are less informed about other issues, and that "...this suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on."
The alter.net story has drastically distorted the original poll. The story picked and chose specific issues about which fox viewers were less informed, while ignoring (and failing to re-print!) other issues about which they were better informed. Then the story then concluded (contrary to the poll's specific language) that Fox viewers were "less informed".
What astonishes me, is that lefty commentors here on slashdot appear to have read a drastically distorted and incorrect news story, then swallowed it whole, without any criticism or research, all the while believing that they are open minded, critical, and better-informed than the stupid people who watch Fox.
It's especially ironic that the alter.net article was complaining about bias in the news on the conservative side, when the article itself was a particularly striking example of not just bias but outright flagrant distortion in the news from the left.
They're not really good arguments. It seems like anything less than letting everyone in the country get a chance to personally examine the birth certificate won't be satisfactory. Did you ever see Reagan's birth certificate in person or McCain's or anyone else other than your own or someone in your family? Where the heck is this even coming from? They even announced his birth in one of the local Honolulu papers at the time of his birth for crying out loud. I've yet to hear the conspiracy theory to explain that one away.
FYI, here's the account of a group that has personally examined his birth certificate: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Some sound arguments have been made that the earth is flat too. Does it make them any less ridiculous? Does it mean that we should start actually acting like those flat earth theories are 'reasonable' and be teaching them in schools? Should we be pandering to the blathering idiots who sit on this lunatic fringe and rant like madmen?
Well only if they only they own media conglomerate apparently. Theories are only that unless their is scientific method to back them up. Until then it is conspiracy theory and voodoo in which case you'd have better luck proving it by throwing bones before a pregnant frog on a full moon; I believe this is how Bill O'Reilly chooses what to talk about.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Tell me this... please - which is a bigger story - the one behind Obama not being born in the US or the story that its possible to fool the most extensive background check team (the secret service - who I assume checks this stuff) in the world?
Both stories kinda defy reality and suggest a huge conspiracy - one bigger than the government could easily cover up.
I'm not a birther, but I do understand why a large amount of people think Obama wasn't born where and when he says so.
In a vacuum, maybe so, but can you understand why a large amount of people disagree with the Republican government of Hawaii, which certified that he was in fact born there?
I mean, if you're looking at the issue in a vacuum, sure, he hasn't produced his longest-evar-form birth certificate. But the Republican government of Hawaii did acknowledge that he was born there, so why would anyone assume that there is anything suspicious going on? There's a line of text on the very bottom of the certificate which says that it is prima facie evidence of live birth in Hawaii. That sounds like it obviously answers the question.
In other words, if that document is good enough for the government of Hawaii, why isn't it good enough for every redneck sitting in front of their TV?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason.
There is not even enough doubt about this for it to be worth writing an article, and the failure of this article to conclusively prove this fact is laughable and somewhat sad. Fox news is known around the world to be deliberate misinformation. I think it is also silly to simply shout correlation != causation as the first post did, as though correlation proves the complete absence of causation. We learn from and gain our understanding of the world from the news sources we read. To say that a news source that so blatantly disregards even the basics of journalistic integrity has no effect on it's viewers' level of informedness about the world is absurd and untenable.