Confirmed: Fox News Makes You Stupid

I have been saying this for the longest time.


CONFIRMED: New Study Proves That Fox News Makes You Stupid


Mon Dec 13, 2010 at 04:41:13 PM PST

Yet another study has been released that proves 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% believe that the stimulus legislation lost jobs.
72% believe that the health reform law will increase the deficit.
72% believe that the economy is getting worse.
60% believe that climate change is not occurring.
49% believe that income taxes have gone up.
63% believe that the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.
56% believe that Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout.
38% believe that most Republicans opposed TARP.
63% believe that Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear).

The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming their viewers and they are doing it for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. They 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 they 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 that they do not get away with it.

Tags: Fox News, PIPA, World Public Opinion, Program on International Policy Attitudes, Propaganda, Media, Recommended (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

Joshua Holland/AlterNet

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times broke a taboo of sorts among mainstream news organizations by urging Fox News to "crack down on... partisanship in its news ranks" or "stop pretending to be an objective news source."

The editorial was prompted by the leak of an internal Fox News memo ordering its "reporters" 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." The memo was sent by Bill Sammon, Fox News' Washington managing editor, in 2009 and released by Media Matters last week.

The Times noted that "such data aren't in serious dispute among climate scientists."

The way the data are interpreted can vary; it's legitimate for climate skeptics to reach conclusions that contradict mainstream theories. But only a crank would deny the underlying temperature data that show the Earth getting warmer - records compiled by independent stations around the world, combined with satellite measurements and confirmed by observations of rising sea levels, vanishing glaciers and other inputs - because to do so is to deny material and measurable facts. Instructing reporters to treat such facts as controversial is like telling them to question the laws of gravity when discussing plane crashes. The only reason for doing it is to further a partisan agenda, in this case an attempt to cast doubt on climate science in order to fend off government efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

It's refreshing to see a leading news outlet abandon the premise that Fox is a "fair and balanced" news organization during the day, and shows its conservative slant only in its evening opinion shows. The Times editorial board noted that mainstream reporters had shrugged off an earlier memo directing Fox personnel to refer to the "public option" as a "government option" during the health-care reform debate because the phase tested poorly among viewers.

The establishment media had also largely ignored internal memos obtained by the Huffington Post after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in 2006, which urged Fox News "reporters," among other things, to "be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled Congress." Similar missives had been revealed earlier by film-maker Robert Greenwald in his 2004 documentary, "Outfoxed." The release of this latest memorandum comes on the heels of a study released last week by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland which found that Fox News viewers are, in the words of News Corpse's Mark Howard, "significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources." The study also found that greater exposure to Fox News increases viewers' misinformation. So, as Howard noted, "the more you watch, the less you know."

Also last week, the non-partisan watchdog Politifact awarded its "Lie of the Year" award to the claim that the health-care bill passed by Congress last year represented a "government take-over" - a lie that Media Matters demonstrated to have been "repeatedly promoted" on the network's "news" programs. Last year, the award went to the lie that the health-care reforms would lead to "death panels," a falsehood also advanced repeatedly on the self-proclaimed news network.

It's refreshing to see a major news outlet give up the chummy pretense of collegiality and call Fox out for what it is: a 24-hour propaganda operation for the Republican Party. Maybe other mainstream outlets will now follow suit, or at least stop uncritically repeating Fox's spin.

If you missed "Fox & Friends" this morning, you missed the co-hosts doing their very best to blame delays on the Zadroga 9/11 health bill on Democrats. Steve Doocy went so far as to say the "Democratic House killed" the bill in July, without noting that it was Republicans that blocked passage -- and that it was Dems who ultimately got the bill through the chamber.

Doocy added that paying for first responders' health care without adding to the deficit -- as opposed to, say, paying for tax cuts for millionaires -- is what really matters.

Eric Boehlert noted this morning, "There's a special place in hell for these people."

For what it's worth, the Senate still hopes to get this done today, and will try to break a Republican filibuster. It would then head back to the House, where there's a serious concern not enough lawmakers will be on hand to pass the bill.

Update: Look for floor action in the Senate around noon. Proponents are cautiously optimistic.

By Steve Benen | Sourced from Political Animal

Posted at December 22, 2010, 9:17 am