I didn't need a report from the University of Maryland to convince me that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed people in the world. Nevertheless, the University of Maryland conducted a study titled “Misinformation and the 2010 election." I see enough letters to the editor, comments to our online forum, and right wing guest on various programs convincing me that someone is feeding these people a line of crap. Since Fox News has such a large viewing audience; they are just that many more naive uninformed people.
The study found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe the erroneous than actual facts on the following subjects:
1. Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses.
2. Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit.
3. The economy is getting worse.
4. The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.
5. Their own income tax have gone up.
6. The auto bailout only occurred under Obama.
7. When TARP came up for a vote most republicans opposed it.
8. It is not clear if Obama was born in the United States.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
MSNBC will have a field day reporting the results of the Maryland study but unfortunately the viewers of Fox News will claim that the study is just another leftist bias study. This study comes after the leaks that Fox News wanted their anchors to discredit the healthcare plan and global warming. The viewers of Fox News are brainwashed and there's nothing in the world that will make them believe Fox News is feeding them propaganda. I'm sure Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity will put up a media bias defense, and their viewers will lap it up. Fox News will continue pumping up the propaganda because they have willing viewers that love to have their ears tickled.
It's really sad because it's hard to have an intelligent debate if the opponent uses unsubstantiated material to make their point. I still believe that every issue has a pro and con, and that should be the starting basis; not made up stuff.
Happy days are here again because president Obama got his tax cut package passed, adding $858 billion to the debt and although everything points to an unsuccessful mission in Afghanistan, we're committed until 2014.
1 comment:
From the editorial page of the LA Times
"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."
"Fox should either come clean about this and crack down on such partisanship in its news ranks, or it should stop pretending to be an objective news source," they concluded
http://tinyurl.com/28lfz34
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