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!

Comments

Seriously?

[AnonGCB]

Correlation != Causation. This is basic guys, cmon.

Re:Seriously?

[wjousts]

You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.

Re:Seriously?

[Pojut]

Remember folks, just because you agree with it doesn't make it unbiased!

Re:Seriously?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I ordinarily find the "zOMG correlation != causation" brigade to be a trifle tiresome, there is a good bit of evidence from other studies that people find ideologically conformant information comfortable and ideologically nonconformant information uncomfortable(albeit to varying degrees: your fundamentalist of any stripe can barely restrain himself frothing at the mouth over the fact that nonconformant information even exists. Joe user just tends to change the channel).

Now that there is a media outlet for almost any political persuasion, it is quite reasonable to suspect that people are congregating around channels reporting from their preferred reality. Trouble is, of course, that there is only one reality actually out there, and it has numerous pitfalls and teeth. We ignore it at our peril.

Re:Seriously?

[Nadaka]

What news media outlet exists for a frustrated rational progressive with strong constitutional tendencies completely dissatisfied with every party?

Re:Seriously?

[catchblue22]

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:Seriously?

[ray-auch]

Wikileaks

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The daily show

Re:Seriously?

[daveschroeder]

Not only that, but if you look at the actual study, 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 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?

[Smidge204]

I wouldn't even call MSNBC "equally" bias. They are bias, and they don't do much to hide that fact (like adopting a slogan like "fair and balanced")... but "equally" bias?

I can't think of any examples where MSNBC hosts openly shilled, on the air, for political candidates. I can't think of any national events MSNBC has helped engineer. I can't think of any politicians that MSNBC supported and ultimately hired as on-air personalities when their campaigns failed. There have not been any leaked e-mails from top MSNBC employees to their on-air personalities, grooming them in what language to use when presenting certain issues.

No fucking way is MSNBC equally bias to Fox.
=Smidge=

Re:Seriously?

[poetmatt]

colbert report

Re:Seriously?

[Gibbs-Duhem]

NPR? At least so long as you don't mind hearing from frustrated rational conservatives as well. I've found that the guests that I disagree with I find I can at least respect for their thoughtful analysis. Also, not guiding your programming by what will improve your ratings the most helps a lot towards making the discourse more informative and less bombastic.

Re:Seriously?

[bberens]

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

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

Re:Seriously?

[Hatta]

If "leftist news channels" were "equally biased" with Fox News, wouldn't they make you less informed? This study shows that MSNBC, arguably the most leftist of the cable news networks, has the best informed viewers.

There are two ways I can see to explain this result. If this effect is causative (the news channel you watch causes you to be better or worse informed), then we must conclude that MSNBC is more factual (since their viewers know more facts). This would disprove your claim of equal bias.

On the other hand this could just be correlational. That is people watch what they agree with, and it just happens that more informed people prefer left-biased news. This would mean that leftists are more informed, and the right wing is more ignorant.

I don't see any way to spin this in favor of either Fox News or conservatism.

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?

[Anubis IV]

If we vote with our wallet when we buy things, and we vote with our eyeballs when we choose a channel, then may I remind you of your right to abstain? Cut the cable. Choose none. Ignorance is bliss. I hate to say it, but I've definitely been happier since we cut cable TV to our house and I stopped watching the news. If something is important, I'll hear about it secondhand from friends, bloggers, aggregators, or some other method. News that's actually important will get to you one way or the other. And when it comes to being informed in important matters, a few minutes of research online will serve you far better than the hours of spin, propaganda, and advertising that you're getting now from the boob tube.

Re:Seriously?

[adonoman]

Reality has a decidedly left-leaning bias.

Re:Seriously?

[dkleinsc]

Besides the many other good suggestions, I'd highly recommend Salon, and Glenn Greenwald in particular. You might also try The Nation, 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:Seriously?

[eldepeche]

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?

[Johnny5000]

You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.

That's like looking at a school which consistently produces kids with terrible grades and terrible test scores and saying "Well, it must just be that stupid kids are going to that school."
Maybe it's the school that's the problem!

People are using Fox News to learn stuff about the world. If they end up misinformed, chances are it's because of the misinformation that Fox News is providing them.

Re:Seriously?

[LocalH]

If a left-leaning person is not even willing to hear from anyone labeled a conservative, I would posit that they are part of the problem as much as they harp on the right.

Re:Seriously?

[localman]

samzenpus said "let the flame wars begin" so...

The larger the government is, the fewer choices the individual has

You throw that in as if it is an established fact, but it is demonstrably untrue. There are plenty of places you can live right now with little or no government and the result is certainly not increased freedom. In such cases you're either living nearly isolated (which limits your options) or you're dealing with bandits and warlords (which limits your options). On the flip side, you and I live under an enormous government and we exercise a degree of freedom unimagined in such places -- exemplified by having this stupid debate on Slashdot in the middle of a workday.

Folks, please -- the whole "government == bad" thing is naive in the extreme. It can only be said by people who haven't the slightest bit of experience in places with little or no government. I'm not saying "government == good", because it certainly is not. Government is a tool, and a necessary one. Dismissing it as "bad" simply means you don't know how to use it properly and aren't willing to try.

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?

[DrgnDancer]

"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?

[PyroMosh]

I can accept that MSNBC and Fox News are equally biased, but I can not accept that they are equal.

Their methods, and quality, are not equal.

Even the hyper-partisans (Maddow, Olbermann) at MSNBC are generally fair with their treatment of the opposition. They base their arguments in facts, and they present their fluff stories as fluff, not serious news (War on Christmas? It's snowing so global warming is a myth? Seriously?)

Is MSNBC flawed? Hell yes. But it's not a brain dead mouthpiece for a political party like Fox News.

I would welcome intelligent discourse from the right. There ARE respectable ideas from the right. I don't agree with Ron Paul, but he's a thoughtful, intelligent individual. As is Condalisa Rice. David Frum has been called intellectual, and I'd say he deserves it. William F. Buckley certainly qualified.

But look at this list. There are certainly others you could add to it that I can't think of at the moment, but where are the leaders? Everyone who is on the right and shows the slightest hint of intellectualism is not taken seriously by the right wing base. Meanwhile, even if the inner circle doesn't take her seriously, Sarah Palin is in the spotlight of the populist base. That's a shame, and our republic is weaker for it.

No, I don't hate Fox News because it's right wing. There are plenty of things I don't agree with or don't like that I can just happily ignore.

The reason I detest Fox News, and the reason I can't just happily ignore it is because its not just anti-intellectual, but its gone so far as to be "proudly stupid", and because many of the tactics it employs are shady and dishonest.

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?

[formfeed]

Correlation != Causation. This is basic guys, cmon

You are right, of course. It's not that Fox News makes people stupid, it's that stupid people watch Fox News.

Except, that they don't talk about uninformed, they talk about misinformed
It's not that the viewers have no information, they have wrong information. And if people claim to get their information from that particular source it stands to reason, that there is causation. -At least on a statistically relevant level. Not for each individual of course. A smoker with lung cancer could also have spent half of his live in his parents radon filled basement..

And the things they were asked are facts. Someones birthplace, when a law got passed, who initiated it, or the nationality of the 9/11 hijackers are just plain facts.

No, this is not a liberal rant. It is a civility/democracy rant. Sadly, politics and journalism has sunken to the point, where anything goes and fact checking is replaced with the pseudo-objectivity of he-said she-said. Fox, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. are despicable, but so was Air America on the left.

Re:Seriously?

[eldepeche]

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?

[Labcoat Samurai]

ASIDE:

My research shows World Public Opinion is sponsored by the Liberal-leaning, Socialist-loving University of Maryland (the state where 70% of the government is Democrat). So the survey bashing FOX viewers is as unsurprising as a Microsoft-funded survey showing Google Chrome is insecure.

When you say "your research" would you be referring to the second sentence in TFA?

"World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources."

It's not like they do anything to hide their funding. Also, you're going to dismiss a study because it is funded by a public research institution in a state that has a lot of democrats in it? Seriously? It's a pretty serious charge against an academic to claim that his research is garbage because of a political agenda. If you want to level such a charge, you'll have to offer more than just some vague statistic about there being a lot of democrats in the government.

Besides, it's unnecessary. The study is available. It says what questions they asked, what the answers were, and who gave the answers. If you have a problem with the results, then just point out the flaws in the study. Shouldn't be too hard. Without looking deeply into the methods and results myself, I don't discount the possibility that the study has flaws, but it's absurd to dismiss it purely on the grounds you list.

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: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?

[LordLimecat]

Not a Fox viewer myself, but I rather like some of the facts this article gives:

72 percent believe the economy is getting worse

While a quick google search shows this article-- By the very site claiming that "economy getting worse" is misinformation-- from august, stating that "the economy is getting worse"! Wow, just wow.

72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit

As opposed to a NY Times article stating that thats EXACTLY what will happen. So we're sitting here bashing on how bad Fox is, when an avid reader of the times could walk away with exactly the same impression? Sort of like how above someone could have read an alternet article about how the economy is sinking, only to be called stupid for doing so in an article 4 months later? Fantastic. Not to mention "healthcare reform bill reducing deficit" is speculation ANYWAY (you saying there will be NO differences from projected costs?), so its rather brash to call anyone who believes otherwise "misinformed".

60 percent believe climate change is not occurring

I would wonder A) how the question was worded (ie, "do you believe MAN has caused significant global warming" vs "do you believe the climate is changing"), and B) what the poll statistics were for other news networks, or the population in general. Sadly the link to the poll is down, if anyone managed to grab it I would be interested in seeing it.

In fact the big problem with the article is that its so biased its not even funny-- the headline puts the worst of slashdot's to shame. You've got flamebait, wild speculation, and assumptions of causation when only correlation is shown. The links to previous polls are hillarious-- we have one poll, by NBC, showing that NBC viewers are smarter (didnt we just get done laughing at poll by Microsoft showing that Microsoft's browser is the best?). And their conclusion, that I particularly liked:

The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason.

Yes, that totally follows-- first, we're going to assume causation, and then we're going to assume intent, and then we're going to claim, whats more, that there is a reason behind all this, and finally that all of this is corroborated by the poll.

Excuse me, while I dont much like a lot of what I see on Fox, its a hell of a lot better than this sort of garbage (well, the news segments at least).
Commenters, if you dont much like Fox, thats great, but please note just how biased this story you're applauding is. Its practically a parody of itself.

Sheesh

[mark72005]

Can you mod an entire article "troll"?

Re:Sheesh

[MozeeToby]

Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed

This title implies that people were tested on current events, randomly assigned a news source to watch or read, and after some period of time were tested again. Now that would actually be a good and interesting study to perform.

In reality, all the study did was take a survey/test that included current events and which news sources you view, there's no control group, there's no attempt to isolate which is the cause and which is the effect, and there's no meaningful result except to say that people go to the news source that agrees with their views, which isn't exactly ground breaking insight.

The study itself isn't flamebait or trolling, but the summary and title sure as hell are.

Re:Sheesh

[Wonko the Sane]

In reality, all the study did was take a survey/test that included current events and which news sources you view, there's no control group, there's no attempt to isolate which is the cause and which is the effect, and there's no meaningful result except to say that people go to the news source that agrees with their views, which isn't exactly ground breaking insight.

They didn't even limit their questions to objectively provable facts.

Just to give one example: Has the US "lost jobs" or "gained jobs"? The way you word that question is going to greatly influence how people answer. If the number of jobs increased in absolute terms, but the increase was less than the number of people who entered working age due to population growth do you count this as a gain or a loss? Many of the other questions are similarly subjective and easily manipulated.

Between the institute that ran the survey and Fox News it's hard to tell who is the pot and who is the kettle.

Re:Sheesh

[BStroms]

I'm not going to defend Fox News, but reading the questions they asked it's obvious this whole survey was designed in a way to create the answer they found. I couldn't find a single question where giving the right answer wasn't something that would look bad for a Republican and/or good for a Democrat or at the very least create some cognitive dissonance among Republican beliefs.

1. In these situations, Republicans aren't going to want to admit the truth even if they know it is true.
2. A conservative leaning news organization is less likely to have reported this news in the first place.
3. If they truly don't know the answer, Republicans will more likely pick an answer that would reflect well upon their beliefs and Democrats likewise.

If you reversed the questions and asked things where the correct answer reflects badly on Democrats, you would find very different results. Say if they were about Charles Rangel's ethics violations or Robert Byrd filibustering the Civil Rights Act. If every question were designed so that the truth reflected poorly on Democrats, I'm sure the result would have been that Fox News made for better informed listeners.

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

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

In other news;

[fridaynightsmoke]

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.

bias maybe?

[Charliemopps]

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

Re:bias maybe?

[Zen_Sorcere]

Shouldn't your have circled various letters on those groups to spell "George Soros" or something?

Say what you mean.

[clone52431]

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.)

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: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.

To paraphrase a FoxNews commentator..

[s0litaire]

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.

People don't watch Fox News to become informed...

[unitron]

...having already made up their minds and not wishing to be confused with the facts, they go there to have their preconceptions re-enforced.

Re:Surprised?

[nomadic]

Are you claiming that news shows giving both sides of a story is a _bad_ thing?

Yes, if one of the sides is clearly false. Ignorance is not a point of view.

Re:I think the title should be...

[allcoolnameswheretak]

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.

MOD PARENT UP

[ClickOnThis]

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.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[linzeal]

I miss the logical fallacy Nazis, they used to eat these freshman and drop outs for breakfast, while the rest of us were like tourists watching a lion eat a gazelle.

Re:Fox News is fine...for news

[spun]

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."

Re:Surprised?

[Beelzebud]

Well let's take an issue that actually has been debated on Fox News. The issue of Obama's birth. The people who "get to decide" that one side of this "debate" are wrong, are the people who look at the evidence, and form their opinions on where the facts lead them. The ones that proclaim, without any evidence, that Obama is a Kenyan citizen are wrong. Period. There is no nuance here. There isn't two equally valid sides that can debate in good faith. One set of people base their opinions on the evidence, and the others just make shit up.

There are actually facts, in the real world. You're playing a semantics game that isn't rooted in common sense. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

Nobody bothers to read the original opinion poll?

[cartman]

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.

Re:Discount the above

[linguizic]

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.

Re:Discount the above

[spun]

You keep talking sense like that and I'll have to start revising my opinion of libertarians.

Re:Discount the above

[spun]

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.

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

[joggle]

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

Seriously

[Internetuser1248]

While you may be right that the article is hugely biased, I myself have seen fox news on several occasions and

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.