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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
The Mainstream Liberal Media(TM) just doesn't respect the in depth reporting that News Corp uses to expose the Truth(TM).
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?
Slashdot readers are shown by a recent survey to have significantly higher IQ scores than average, yet with higher rates of social anxiety. What is it about Slashdot that makes its readers so smart, yet so awkward?
THIS JUST IN- people who buy the most gas/petrol also tend to have larger cars than average. Scientists are trying to find out why putting more gas in a car's tank causes the car to grow.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Perhaps people who believe that Obama was not born in the US are more likely to be watchers of fox news, not the other way around?
The flame war should be towards you for posting such drivel! This is neither news, or for nerds. Here's an idea, why don't you just replace your news feed with one from Huffington/Politico, since it appears that's the way you want to go.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
"Study Confirms That Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc. Makes You Stupid".
No, really, that's what the article says.
You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.
Reminds me of a recent Simpsons episode news helicopter for Fox.
My work here is dung.
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.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Where's the survey of Daily Show/Colbert Report viewers? I doubt we score much better than MSNBC on politics but our marks on puns are sky high.
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
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?
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
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/
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.
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.
Here are things the survey says are false and the percentage of Fox News viewers that believe it. My comments are in parenthesis.Most questions are opinions or confusing definitions not facts. It is obvious that this people that made this survey intended it to show people don't agree with their interpretation of the facts.
91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs (Opinion. We have lost jobs since the stimulus was passed no way to say whether the stimulus helped or hurt)
72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit (Opinion)
72 percent believe the economy is getting worse (Opinion. Based on what measure?)
60 percent believe climate change is not occurring (Opinion. At least this one has some scientific backing)
49 percent believe income taxes have gone up (Confusing definition. People know the tax cuts are expiring and haven't been renewed)
63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (Confusing definition. Cuts to whom and how much)
56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout (Confusing definition. Bailout happened during 2009. Bush may have started it but Obama didn't stop it.)
38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP (First somewhat good question. Could be phrased "Most Republican Congresspeople voted against TARP. You could actually verify this. Just saying Republicans doesn't mean elected politicians)
63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear) (Second good question. Documents have been produced that show he was born in the US)
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I love Slashdot. It has so many good articles on tech. But I think BS political posts like this detract from the value and dignity of the site.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
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?
They don't profess Obama was born elsewhere - they just leave it as a "question". Like they don't profess Obama is a Socialist / Muslim terrorist sympathizer / Elitist. Just slap a question mark there and it's good enough not to be sued.
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.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
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.
The Economist used to be a good magazine. But ever since they pushed the Bush tax cuts as good for the economy, in violation of nearly every proven economic principle, I lost all respect for them.
I'd rather read Paul Krugman. Yes, he's liberal. But he also has this very offensive habit of being correct.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Hear hear. To claim that MSNBC is somehow "just as bad" as Fox News is to invoke a false analogy. Instead of doing journalism, Fox News arguably is trying to destroy it.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If there's any show that really draws a constant audience of liberals to live broadcast, it's probably Stewart and Colbert.
Who, as it turns out, have the best informed audience of any "news" program.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
TFA says:
"Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just aint so:
91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
49 percent believe income taxes have gone up"
No economist can prove that the "stimulus" (exactly which one?) caused job gains or lost. They can speculate, but there is no control to the experiment. Money may have gone to hire various people, but then the unseen effects of the bill (such as fear of future high deficits) may have reduced aggregate demand and caused private job losses. Certainly if one looks at the unemployment rate graph, it certainly isn't clear that it helped much.
We don't know what effect the ACA will have on the deficit because that is in the future. The deficit is taxes in (which is related to total incomes) versus spending out. No one knows what that will be in the future (especially as the regulation of ACA seems to be changing on a day-to-day basis, see the Mini-Med plan rule changes). Again, all we have are predictions.
By the way, if anyone would like to bet that the Federal deficit will be lower in 2015 than now, I'll take that bet on the other side!
"The economy getting worse" is a qualitative statement, not a provable quantitative one. You could believe that GDP is rising, unemployment claims are dropping, yet the large number of mortgage-backed securities still in the banking sector have not yet been marked down to their true value, possibly leading to a second financial meltdown. Or you could be fearing inflation in the future due to quantitate easing, or you could be fearing US sovereign debt crisis due to large future deficits due to Medicare and Social Security costs.
"income taxes have gone up" is a true statement for me - I live in California. Federal rates are still going to go up at the end of the year unless a bill is passed.
There's a difference between ungrounded assumptions of non-experts and the reasonable expectations of experts.
Since it is the opinion of nearly every single unbiased economic expert AND the non-partisan CBO that the stimulus saved and created millions of jobs and helped stop our freefall into a second great depression, disagreeing with these opinions should at least require some facts.
The reality that those who don't want to believe this can cherry-pick, shift arguments and ignore these opinions doesn't disprove them. But it can make people find ideological comfort in *thinking* their disproven - which is the greatest danger of super-partisan outfits like Fox News.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
According to http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/about.php?nid=&id=#support, World Public Opinion is funded by the Tides Foundation, which is a pet project of George Soros and Al Gore, among others. There is no love lost between Soros and Fox. I'd take this survey with a block of salt.
The party's over
To support that: Fox News has much better ratings than MSNBC.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2010/04/fox-news-channel-marks-100-months-as-most-watched-cable-news-channel-nbc-nightly-news-wins-weekly-race.html
In prime time, it has 50% of all viewers of news channels, and MSNBC a paltry 20%. The top 9 programs are all Fox News programs; Olberman's and Maddow's one million viewers are a third of O'Reilly's and half of Beck's and Hannity's.
As you observer, Stewart does beat MSNBC with 1.3 million viewers, but it doesn't come near to Fox's top commentators:
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/04/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-1-in-late-night-with-adults-18-49-for-october-bests-the-tonight-show-late-night-with-david-letterman/70856
The one thing that contradicts your conclusion: none of these numbers are a substantial fraction of all voters. However, those are only nightly numbers; the total number of occasional viewers is probably at least 2 to 3 times that. And even more importantly, each one is probably (mis)informing friends and family who don't otherwise watch TV news.
Ya know, I could easily raise my blood pressure thanks to comments from anonymous cowards and my hatred towards most media outlets, but I'm going to walk away from this one. Let's stick with News for Nerds rather than News for Political Junkies.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
This is a rather strange survey. It didn't ask what people believed or knew to be true, it asked if they knew that "most experts have concluded X".
It isn't clear if they ever defined "most" or consistently defined the "experts". It doesn't admit the possibility of additional information now available after "most experts concluded X" which might legitimately modify people's answers.
It also isn't clear that the survey ensured people answered the survey in the intended way. That is, people might disagree with the conclusions of "most experts". What if they were informed on what "most experts" concluded but disagreed -- and answered "wrong" because of that?
While the survey may be perfectly accurate (and I may like the results) it really isn't clear that the results are particularly accurate. Too much other, rather important factors are simply not taken into account here.
You may not be a birther, but your logic is about as faulty as a birther's.
To renounce one's citizenship, one must:
1. appear in person before a U.S. consular or diplomatic officer,
2. in a foreign country (normally at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate); and
3. sign an oath of renunciation
And minor children can't have their citizenship renounced by their parents.
http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html
So no, Obama didn't renounce his citizenship, even if he put down Indonesia on his college aid forms since a) He was doing this for a college and not before a US consular or diplomatic officer, b) he wasn't in a foreign country (he was in the US), and c) a college aid form is NOT an oath of renunciation.
Also, regarding the claim he gamed the system for his own ends, you started off your comment saying that he spent millions of dollars sealing his college records. So you essentially admit that you have NO PROOF that he actually put Indonesian down as his citizenship in his college aid forms. All you cite is "There is some though (sic)", which is nothing but speculation.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
When was the last time Nozick had anything printed of his besides his Anarchy, State and Utopia? 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?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
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?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yeah. Should have been: "Stupid Makes You Fox News"
They don't even need to do that. Fox News has argued in court that they have the right to lie to the public. They won the lawsuit on that basis.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The one where Beck claims to be one so he can sucked people into thinking he has economic, political and theological answers to all their problems, when in reality he doesn't understand the concepts involved between between the Rawlsian 'difference principle' and Nozick's 'entitlement theory'.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The Tides Foundation contributes to the World Policy Organization. And who funds the Tides Foundation? Spooky-dude himself, George Soros. Yet another liberal-skewed 'poll' conducted by a liberal, internationalist think tank, paraphrased by some idiot who gets his news off of Alternet of all places. Somehow 'less-informed' became 'stupid'. Nope, not biased at all. Really, people, isn't there some tech news out there in the world someplace that would at least be relevant AND interesting?
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
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.
* 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
What does this question even mean? It could mean was the stimulus legislation directly responsible for lost jobs or it could mean were jobs lost despite the stimulus legislation. The latter I believe is true. It would have to be for unemployment to remain at close to 10% and for jobless claims to rise before, during, and after the stimulus.
* 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
Won't it? They say it won't but then again they said the Big Dig would only cost a fraction of what it actually did, so there estimates can not be 100% relied upon. We won't know until afterwards who was right and who was wrong. This isn't a verifiable fact yet because it hasn't happened.
* 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
First off, define "The Economy". Second define "Getter better" and "getting worse". You can't. The economy is amorphous entity conjured up as both the cause of great pain and the bringer endless happiness. People only really understand their own personal economies, their own personal finances and for most of them they are worse off now then they were before and it doesn't look like its getting any better.
* 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
And what percentage of expert scientists believe this as well? This is not a concluded fact, it is a controversial issue that has experts on both sides contradicting each other. Both sides firmly believe they are right, and since there is lots of money to be had on either side of the issue (the question is who gets it) ulterior motives are highly suspected as they should be.
* 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
State or Federal? In Massachusetts income taxes have gone up. For who? people making more or less than $250,000? Taxes are such a complex web of crap that even full-time accountants and compliance officers probably don't know for sure one way or the other whether this is true. One example: Did taxes go up? No, but deductions went down.
* 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
Probably because the tax cuts included were invisible to most people. Sure they got what $500 evenly divided across all paychecks for the year. Who would have noticed this or even spent a whole lot of time talking about it?
* 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
Well he did call for the firing of the CEO and get a lot of face-time and credit for sealing the deal. Didn't GM and Chrysler initiate it though?
* 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
Define "Most Republicans". The elected ones, the members of the party, or all who registered as Republicans? Besides that happened years ago, with all the fighting back and forth who can remember that? Not most people. Besides I doubt any news outlet clearly said most Party-X agree, most Party-Y disagree.
* 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)
When was this made clear? I must of missed it. He has vehemently fought any attempt to make his birth certificate available to the public or his school transcripts for that matter. He has spent millions of dollars suppressing this. Why? What does he have to hide? If it's not that he wasn't born in the US then what is it? What would be worth all the money, time and aggravation? This is what makes it unclear to people who don't believe everything they hear. And as far as history goes, I think it is unprecedented. For a US President
Sure. Here's Republican Governer Mark Sanford right after being outed as an adulterer, suddenly Democrat:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906240026
Mark Foley, right after being caught going after pages. And some other cases too:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200610130010?src=other
They also often identify Lieberman as a Democrat, which irritates me no end. He was kicked out of the Democratic party and forced to run as an independent because of his constant selling out of other Democrats. That's still the main role he seems to play as an independent - his recent episode of actually helping with DADT is notable in it's great rarity...
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
What puts a bur up my butt is the assertion that Fox News is Libertarian when in fact it is 100% Authoritarian Statist Conservative. True libertarians are against the PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War, Medicaid Part D, the banned use of new stem cell lines, and are FOR abortion rights. Fox News does not qualify under any of these. I wish people would stop throwing the word "Libertarian" around so willy-nilly. The KKK used to use that word too, even though equal right is a fundamental tenant of Libertarianism. It gets used to mean "I'm against the things that I don't like, and the rest of the country is for the things I don't like, so I'm against them". Fuck that, I'm sick of this shit. Assholes like that ruined the idea of state's rights by hiding behind it any time they were told they can't systematically fuck people over just because they are different. Now we have a bunch of liberals who are Federalist Liberals because the states rights issue is now associated with those fuck wads. What those liberals don't seem to understand is that they can all move to the coasts, legalize pot, abortion, and put socialist principles into practice while the next state over is free to the exact opposite and we can all live in our separate worlds in peace and harmony. The same goes for these holier than thou Christian Theocrats. YOU CAN HAVE MISSISSIPPI ALL YOU WANT JUST DON'T LET IT AFFECT ME IN MY STATE OF CHOICE. God damn it this pisses me off.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
You keep talking sense like that and I'll have to start revising my opinion of libertarians.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
The point is that Fox's hosts DON'T come out and say it. They always state it as a question. This way they get to raise the implication without ever even dealing with it being disproven.
And I can't think of a single other network that has had as many people on questioning Obama's citizenship - a fact that was already settled *during his run* back in 2008.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
And I can't think of a single other network that has had as many people on questioning Obama's citizenship - a fact that was already settled *during his run* back in 2008.
... though they're more aggressive in their inaccuracies and breezily absurd assertions (say, about the consistently violent and racist nature of Tea Party types, or similarly - demonstrably false - bits of nonsense). You doth protest too much, I think.
Are you talking about guests on shows? Have you ever counted how often Fox's pundit-style shows have on everyone from Al Sharpton to Michael Moore in order to let them have a say? You're describing their broadcasts exactly like everyone else who never actually watches any of it. But you ARE describing, more accurately, the way that MSNBC does things
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Now there's an Oxymoron. One cannot ignore the ratings though. But one question is currently being evaluated; and that is, "are more people getting their news content from the Internet?" I think the answer is a resounding "YES!". By deduction, that leaves only those that are agreeable to being ill-informed. The problem here is that those that watch FN are most likely those that are Fiercely Proud Ignorant types; and these folks appear to be motivated to vote their whim.
You missed the point. The point is that ad hominems are logical fallacies. It doesn't matter whether the publishers of the survey are biased or not. It only matters whether the survey is true. You have not presented any evidence that the survey is wrong in any way.
What you are doing is called poisoning the well. You are trying to call the motives of the publisher into question. The problem with that is, the publishers motives have no bearing on the veracity of the survey. They could all be child molesting professional con artists and still publish an accurate survey.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I would consider myself "European". My nationality is not German, I grew up in 3 different countries, but I have lived mostly in Germany.
But how do you determine that?
See, my opposition to abortion isn't political. It's philosophical. I agree that, if a foetus isn't human, abortion is fine. I posit that, if a foetus is human, abortion is murder, and thus not fine. The crux of that particular matter is the philosophical question of "what is human?" rather than the political question of "to what degree should governments limit the freedom of the individual".
It's the problem you get when you try to determine political position by enumerating policies. Someone could disagree with a policy, no not because of their position on government. They could, for instance, not believe the policy is likely to work, even though the stated aim of the policy is in line with their political thoughts. You could imagine a Libertarian who was for the Iraq war, if they truly believed that Iraq presented a threat to the security of the US, and the government was legitimately exercising its responsibility to defend the nation.
I'd probably agree with you about FOX news (probably - I'm not American and have limited exposure to it, and what exposure I do have tends to be heavily biased) - I was just disagreeing with your methodology of "testing libertarian-ness".
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
If commodore64_love had raised the issues you do, I wouldn't have excoriated him. Even though the issues you raise are a real stretch to find something, anything, to criticize about the survey, they are still, logically speaking, legitimate points. Rather than call him out for being a hypocritical ad hominem slinging asshole, I would simply have rebutted the points.
You can't figure budget issues based on how you hypothetically think a law will be changed, that is just completely dishonest. You rate a law according to how it is written, you do not rate some fantasy version of the law.
Actually, your last point is utter bullshit, so I probably would have excoriated him for that, too. You raise another hypothetical point, "Well, what IF the questions were misleading?" I don't know, what if your mother was a whore? I have no proof she was, and I'm not saying she was, I'm ASKING, what if your mother were a cum slurping crack addicted gutter whore?
Yeah, what I just did there? That is what you just did, so don't fucking whine about it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It matters because it's something to rile people up over. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. It's another imaginary point of contention that Fox news uses to keep it's viewers worked up about. If there isn't something to be outraged and upset over, their viewership would dwindle. That's how they make their money. Get people terrified over liberal-straw-man-of-the-day, then campaign vigorously against it. Be sure to tune in - we're fighting for your rights, America! That kind of crap.
Problem is, when gullible people believe their bullcrap and act on it. Like this guy. He's going to jail simply because he watches Fox news and believes what they say. His real crime is simply being gullible and believing what the "news" people told him.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This might be true, however I've never actually met a true libertarian. All I've ever met are people who don't like paying taxes and believe that if the libertarians got in they could have everything they have now but not pay any.
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.
I have to call a bit of B.S. on this one. If you happen to already have a relationship with a good doctor who will accept the state insurance, then you're fine, but it can be very tough to get an speedy appointment with a competent doctor otherwise. And what percentage of your salary does that universal health care cost? Around 14% IIRC, which means that if you're pulling in €40000 / year (a good but not extravagant salary by German standards) then you're paying about €460 per month for that awesome universal health care. Without taking exchange rates into account, $460/month would get you some really nice health insurance in the U.S. - the kind that would let you go to any doctor whenever you want, and not worry about being able to pay the bills. Admittedly, when you're a relatively young factory worker with a stay-at-home wife and two kids, that insurance is a pretty good deal. For those of us who are single or with a working spouse (don't even get me started on the tax rates that a dual-income married couple has to pay), it's a poor value.
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.
We've got that, too, except for the state protection from getting fired. Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but I really think that the Germans take employee protection and job security too far, while the Americans don't take it seriously enough. Somewhere in the middle would be nice.
In socialist Germany we have low unemployment and a trade surplus.
We cut jobs, you implement Kurzarbeit - I think you could make a good argument for either measure, but that's for another thread.
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.
You've got me there.
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%.
Believe me, lots of us here on the new continent can't figure it out, either.
--Nate
Not likely.
Libertarians are still, at the core of their ideology, trickle down economics fundamentalists.
The basis of their ideology is a rejection of reality.
Which also might have something to do with their rejection of econometrics.
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.
Libertarians should not be trickle down economics fundamentalists at all. Stimulating the supply side or the demand side is ALL government intervention in the free market.
While I am sure there are some principled and thoughtful libertarians, to me the majority of them seem to adhere to a philosophy that boils down to the childish whine of, "You're not the boss of me!" Adults realize that we are all in this together. We have to live together, there is no other option anymore. We are interdependent. We are all our brother's keepers.
Being in a relationship with even one other human being requires compromise. Living in a society requires a lot of compromise. Libertarians seem unwilling to compromise on anything, out of principle. I've actually had conversations with libertarians where they come out against the very idea of compromise! The particular fellow I am thinking of seemed to want something he called "agreement" rather than compromise. As he made a distinction between agreement and compromise, I can only assume that by "agreement" he meant "You agree with me."
I think that this accurately illustrates the mentality of most libertarians. They believe they are better than others, and that they are being held down by a conspiracy of losers. If only the losers would accept their rightful place and stop trying to band together to form "governments" and make pesky "laws" protecting themselves, the strong (that is to say, the particular libertarian you are talking to at the time.) could rightfully profit off of those losers while feeling good about themselves for providing said loser an opportunity to serve their betters. Losers that can't serve their betters should just go die someplace out of the way.
They couch their arguments in terms of freedom, but most libertarians act like frustrated little authoritarians who think that if government just got out of the way, a "natural" hierarchy would emerge, with them on top, of course.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton