# Fox News and Milum **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 19, 2003, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400 "2003-10-19T20:02:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/41 "2003-10-21T17:47:49Z")
I wonder whether, philosophically, it is possible to prove objectively either bias or fairness. You are biased if you cannot see my point of view; you are fair if you can. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/42 "2003-10-21T17:57:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > You are biased if you cannot see my point of view; you are fair if you can. I think the way that normally works is: You are biased if you don’t agree with my point of view; you are fair if you do. ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/43 "2003-10-21T17:58:23Z")
This thread seems to take Milum a bit too seriously. Debating him. Questioning his thought process. Offering parodies of his posting style. Doesn’t anyone else look at him and just think. "eh, the old over-the-top affected board persona,” and move on? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/44 "2003-10-21T18:41:26Z")
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: seems to me that the quality of “debate” among conservatives has been hitting the skids lately. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/45 "2003-10-21T19:00:02Z")
**rjung** Maybe you should put the quotation marks around conservatives too. ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/46 "2003-10-21T19:41:59Z")
**Soup\_du\_jour** & **Larry Mudd** , Your posts, while interesting, appear to be misleading IMHO. Fact is that all the examples chosen are of people having misconceptions that are in one direction - in support of the war. It is extremely likely that the viewership of Fox is more pro-war than the average citizen, and thus is predisposed to hold misconceptions in support of the war than are viewers of other stations. IOW, the notion that you are advancing is that these misconceptions are the result of Fox distortions or bias, but this is not shown - people tend to hear what they want to hear, and to believe things that are in accordance with their own beliefs and prior inclinations and sympathies. A comparison would be to pick out a list of liberal misconceptions (say, a tendency to underestimate the percentage of taxes paid by the richest Americans, or corporations) and see if these correlate to listenership/viewership in outlets like PBS or CNN. I would suspect that they would, for similar reasons. But in the absence of such comparisons, your numbers are meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/47 "2003-10-21T21:16:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SimonX \* > Maybe you should put the quotation marks around conservatives too. For God’s sake why ? Milum’s absolutely on center with the mainstream political core of conservatism. If you aren’t OK with that, either change the name of the group you identify as “conservatives”, or take back the power from all these “fake” conservatives. Whining about demeaned labels to us **liberals** leaves the distinct odor of political correctness wafting on the breeze. Don’t _real_ conservatives hate the PC police ? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/48 "2003-10-21T21:45:33Z")
**Izzy** , the PIPA study _does_ examine the correlation between respondants’ support for the war with regard to these same misperceptions, and, as you’d expect, people who believed that Saddam was working with al Qaeda, that WMD’s had been found, or that world opinion was generally in favour of the invasion, _were_ more likely to support the war. 53% of respondants who held any _one_ of these beliefs were in support of the war, 78% of folks who believed two of them supported it, and 86% of folks who were convinced that all three premises were true thought the invasion was a good idea. Of course people who support the war are more likely to watch Fox News than people who don’t, (because it’s so \ “Fair & Balanced” ,) and of course people who believe any of the three common misperceptions are more likely to support the war than people who don’t, but that is clearly not _all_ that is going on. Read the section headed The Effect of Demographic Variations in Audience: > [@](#): > > Variations in misperceptions according to news source cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the characteristics of each audience. It is true that some audiences vary according to such demographics as party identification and education — Fox viewers are more Republican, PBS-NPR is higher in education and less Republican, print readers are more educated, and CBS is less educated and more Democratic. […] Looking just at Republicans, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 43%. For Republican Fox viewers, however the average rate was 54% while for Republicans who get their news from PBS/NPR the average rate is 32%. This same pattern obtains with Democrats and independents. More suggestion of the line between correlation and causation being crossed: > [@](#): > > It would seem natural to assume that misperceptions are due to a failure to pay attention to news and that those who have greater exposure to news would have fewer misperceptions. This was indeed the case with those primarily get their news from print media. However, for most media outlets, increased attention did not reduce the likelihood of misperceptions. Most striking, in the case of those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly _increases_ the likelihood of misperceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/49 "2003-10-21T22:38:15Z")
Is this a great board or what? Even in the murky depths of the Pit, a debate breaks out, complete with cites. You could find yourselves incurring the wrath of a mod and getting moved to GD. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/50 "2003-10-21T23:24:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SimonX \* > **rjung** > Maybe you should put the quotation marks around conservatives too. Mebbe, but then that opens up the “no true Scotsman” can of worms… Does **Milum** qualify as a “pop-con”? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Soup\_du\_jour](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Soup\_du\_jour](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soup_du_jour)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/51 "2003-10-21T23:27:42Z")
**IzzyR** , I’d absolutely love to see such a study. I agree that this study only gives one half of the picture, as every misperception is more likely to be held by a certain ideological slant. It would be interesting to see if the disparity among news networks held constant across liberal misconceptions as well. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/52 "2003-10-22T00:09:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rjung \* > \*\*Mebbe, but then that opens up the “no true Scotsman” can of worms… > \*\* True enough. You’re right. As long as it’s just a variety of conservative I suppose it’s true. It’s just that when I was growing up, conservatism was taught to me as a **thoughtful** , **well-reasoned** sort of thing. There need to be more than two “teams” and not so much team rooting as genuine asseessment of fact, debate and discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/53 "2003-10-22T00:38:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Soup\_du\_jour \* > \*\*It would be interesting to see if the disparity among news networks held constant across liberal misconceptions as well. \*\* If you would give us a list of “liberal misconceptions” we could go find out. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/54 "2003-10-22T12:10:41Z")
Buttmunchkin. Yodelfart. No such thing as a “pop-con”. ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400/55 "2003-10-22T13:11:12Z")
**Larry Mudd** , I don’t see how your response addresses the issue that I raised (though the quotes do claim to) - essentially you’ve changed the comparison from the public at large to one broken down among subgroups, but the same point holds. Republicans (and Democrats) are not a monolithic group, and individual Republicans can differ in terms of their support for the war, or the degree of their support for the war. I would think it extremely likely that the group comprised of “Republicans who watch PBS/NPR” is more liberal and less supportive of the war, on average, than the group comprised of “Republicans who watch Fox”. Same point holds. The second quote is interesting, but since it claims only a “modest” increase in the likelihood of misperceptions I don’t think you can make anything of it - certainly not without some more statistical detail. And here too, an analysis of the predispositions of the audiences might mitigate the result. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-news-and-milum/208400.md?page=2)