Is it really that bad?
This sounds a lot like that “IE users are dumb” hoax from a few months back. But the university seems legit.
It’s not clear to me, though, what they mean by “don’t watch news at all” in that survey.
I barely watch television news at all—whether it’s FOX or CNN or MSNBC or the nightly network broadcasts—but i still read plenty of news, mainly online.
It’s that bad in that it informs people about things that are not true. So there is a set of “conservative facts” that don’t actually reflect our actual universe. Someone who doesn’t watch any news wouldn’t have those incorrect facts distorting their view of the world.
Reality has a well-known Liberal bias; creating ‘conservative facts’ is a way to Balance that out, ensuring the news is Fair And Balanced.
Good point, that describes me as well.
If you go to the methodology only 64 people of the 612 surveyed watched Fox news at some point.
So, that’s your sample
So, what you really have is a survey of people who will answer their phone when they don’t recognize the number, and who will hang on and wait for the autodialer to connect them to a human being who will attempt to coerce them into taking a survey, and who will then spend the next five minutes or so answering multiple choice questions from a stranger.
Than, this is apparently normalized for demographics.
I’m not impressed:
Wasn’t there a study/survey done within the past year or so that found the opposite result? Something like Fox viewers are more likely to recognize certain political terms or situations or somethingorother… I can’t recall it so don’t know if it’s germane to this thread. I think Bricker started a thread on it, or maybe he commented in it, or maybe someone used a word that rhymed with Bricker. Again, shaky memory.
Anyone know/remember what I’m talking about (or is it just a crazy dream)?
Irrespective of the sampling issue, I was instantly skeptical as a result of the same point mhendo makes; “watching news on TV” does not mean “unaware of news.”
I almost never watch news on TV. I certainly never watch TV news at home, except live election coverage, which isn’t a frequent occurrence; I can only say I watch TV news in the sense that I sometimes catch it when I’m in a public place with a TV tuned in to a news channel.
But I am in fact reasonably well informed, because I read newspapers, both paper and online, and keep abreast of the news that way.
It’s entirely possible FOX viewers are less informed than people who watch no news at all for the simple reason that people who don’t spend much time watching TV spend more time reading and such.
I believe you dropped a ‘not’ here.
Anyway, to bolster your point, the median age of TV viewership was 50 as of 2008 and there’s absolutely no reason to think it’s come down since then. TV simply isn’t relevant to the coming generation; much like how the Boomers utterly failed to switch from TV to radio when they hit middle age, the people who will hit middle age in a few decades are not going to switch from the Internet to TV when they do.
Or not.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this was reported in the New York Daily News. It has a long-standing rivalry with the New York Post, which is also owned by News Corporation. Whatever the merits of this study, I’ll bet that the editors of the Daily News were quite happy to publish these results.
And what about people who non-critically read an article that reinforces their point of view and immediately rush into the BBQ Pit to proclaim their superiority?
But this was the best part:
I watch lots of news, almost never FOX, and I can’t tell you how many Occupiers who were interviewed and made a point to say they were not affiliated with any party, or that they represented a true cross section of the political spectrum.
And the Tea Partiers claimed not to be all Republican.
It’s just an in thing not to identify with any party. But when you look at the issues given, they clearly are more in line with the Democratic Party.
And, anyways, it’s been shown before that Fox News watchers are less informed than other news watchers, so I don’t find this so hard to believe. Not knowing about Egypt and Libya is inexcusable for anyone who actually watches the news.
And the stuff about people being stupid enough to answer the survey doesn’t work as long as there is still a clear correlation. Because that means that even the stupid people who don’t watch Fox News are more aware.
Still, I’d like to see the actual questions. That website is weird. You go to the main page, which has a link to the article, rather than any research. And then a link in the article tells you to go to their main page. So there doesn’t appear to be any way to actually get more information. Unlike the other stuff mentioned, that is enough for me to be suspicious.
Old story.
Yes. Forget the smug bullshit about reality having a liberal bias - Fox is devoted to the production of lies. That’s all it comes down to, an organisation that deliberately fabricates evidence. Whether they’re mislabeling Republicans as Democrats, creating caricatures and portraying them as stock photos, or declaring that people who like a particular TV show are actually committing fraud, Fox News is about lying their asses off to anyone stupid enough to believe them.
OK, sort of like the average German preWW2 hearing the term Jew and recognizing it as a dirty, mutant evil baby killing and eating scum who has as their entire purpose stealing as much as possible from the noble Aryan Germans.
Unfortunately, honest understanding comes from unbiased reporting. Every news broadcast or publication has a bias. Some are more biased than others. Who was it that said that history is written by the winners? We think of Nazi era Germany as all evil but there was a fairly large amount of the population that were only Nazi in name, they had to join the party to keep their job, most kids were forced into the 2 Nazi organized youth movements. Men were pretty much universally conscripted into the military unless they were physically unable to. The Soviet Union were not all evil communists, wanting to destroy capitalism, the USA and the American Way - most people wanted to have families and get on with living. Not all Muslims want to destroy the US, many are perfectly happy to live here.
Saying it reminds me of a hoax isn’t considered critical? Not even a little?
Then scroll down on Scylla’s link.
No, sort of like the average news report of a survey does a lot of conclusion-making on behalf of the survey without regards to any semblance of journalistic rigour.
Please don’t make it sound like I’m defending Fox viewers (in general) as in touch with facts and capable of perceiving the network’s frequently tortured logic to promote the Repbulican/conservative agenda. I need a shower.
I was going to refer to the constant attempts at discrediting climate science, but this blast from the past should be enough:
Yep, FOX news still relies of false equivalence to mislead viewers, and notice how Gerardo does not mention that it was thanks to FOX network that the Moon hoax TV special from several years ago, was a big reason why the levels of support for this “theory” are what they are nowadays.
Now the kicker, this bit comes from early this year. Kudos for Bill Nye in his attempt to be the voice of reason, but unfortunately Gerardo and FOX gets the last, and most influential bit of the false equivalence to be believed by their viewers.