I urge you to check out the following study done for WorldPublicOpinion.org by researchers at the University of Maryland. It surveyed U.S. voters on a variety of issues to determine how well informed the voters were, their sources of news, and how often they watched or read these sources. The survey found that those who got their news from MSNBC or public broadcasting (PBS or NPR) were better informed than others. Those who said they watched Fox News were the worst informed.
Incredibly, the study also showed that the more often people watched Fox News, the more misinformed they were!
For example, those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to falsely believe that:
• most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (the opposite is true)
• most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (in fact, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded unambiguously that climate change is occurring)
• the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (the stimulus legislation included about $288 billion in tax cuts)
• it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (the claim that Obama was not born within the United States was proven to be false in 2008)
It’s alarming that a major news network is misinforming its viewers. Is this negligence, or is Fox News deliberately misleading the public?
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf
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