Thursday, December 16, 2010

Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid

Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid

By Mark Howard, News Corpse
Posted on December 15, 2010, Printed on December 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/
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Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. 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. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.
So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.
In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. 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
  • 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
  • 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
  • 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
  • 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
  • 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
  • 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP benefited from the ignorance that Fox News helped to proliferate. The results were apparent in the election last month as voters based their decisions on demonstrably false information fed to them by Fox News.
By the way, the rest of the media was not blameless. CNN and the broadcast network news operations fared only slightly better in many cases. Even MSNBC, which had the best record of accurately informing viewers, has a ways to go before it can brag about it.
The conclusions in this study need to be disseminated as broadly as possible. Fox’s competitors need to report these results and produce ad campaigns featuring them. Newspapers and magazines need to publish the study across the country. This is big news and it is critical that the nation be advised that a major news enterprise is poisoning their minds.
This is not an isolated review of Fox’s performance. It has been corroborated time and time again. The fact that Fox News is so blatantly dishonest, and the effects of that dishonesty have become ingrained in an electorate that has been been purposefully deceived, needs to be made known to every American. Our democracy cannot function if voters are making choices based on lies. We have the evidence that Fox is tilting the scales and we must now make certain its corporate owners do not get away with it.
Mark Howard is an artist and author and the publisher of News Corpse.
© 2010 News Corpse All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/
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Fox is disgraceful, they quite simply aren't a news organisation, instead being a heavily biased collection of talking heads who distort reality to try and fit it into their delusions... but it goes further than that they and the rest of the right wing media have been distorting reality for generations, they have been painting a nice black and white picture that fights nicely in with the American ego 'you are either with us or against us', this attitude exists not only on the right but also on the 'left'.

Pretty much every debate in the US is split into 2 opposing groups, pro and anti with the battle lines being drawn to separate the two stances that are mutually exclusive, those in the middle who try and point out the areas of agreement or consensus tend to be attacked by both sides...

Faux news is a huge example of not only the dividing lines but the lengths striven to distort reality to meet this reductionist view of the world and reality.

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