Well that's like saying water is wet, but it's good to see it confirmed by actual polls where devoted FAUX NOOZ fans have been asked questions about current affairs and then to see how uninformed they are about them.
Also, what would we expect of a cable teevee station that employs a charlatan clown like Glenn Beck? He's been exposed as nothing more than a clever manipulator of weak-minded people who possess an inability to use critical thinking skills to see through his moronic, but dramatic, tear-soaked presentations of faux history and skewed factoids.
And then there's Sarah Palin, the silly, self-satisfied know-nothing lightweight who is promoted on the cable station that caters to the dumb and dumber. She's a star, along with Beck and that other talking-points birdbrain, Hannity, of a cable station that deals in lies and misrepresentations, and is blatantly a propaganda wing of the Republican Party.
Also, as stated above, and as you will see below, FOX is a cable news station that has succeeded in contributing to its viewers stupid quotient:
"A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources.
December 15, 2010
Yet another study has been released proving 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 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
•72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
•72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
•60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
•49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
•63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
•56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
•38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
•63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP 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 it 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 its corporate owners do not get away with it."
Follow the links here to see the ABC/Wall Street Journal pdf/file on more FOX News bad news.
UPDATE I:
Capt. Fogg over at The Swash Zone has more on the fake cable news station and further proof of why people who watch it are deliberately misinformed.
UPDATE II:
From Crooks and Liars by Nichole Belle:
"MEET THE STUPIDS
Yes, the people who get their news from Fox are stupid. But Booman wonders if it's a chicken-or-egg scenario: do people get stupid from Fox or do stupid people gravitate to Fox?
I'd like to see a controlled experiment where they let one group of people self-select which cable news network they watch and another group is assigned randomly. Then we can see if the stupid people are choosing Fox News and being made more stupid, or if Fox News can draw in mentally competent people and turn them into drooling buffoons who think Charles Krauthammer isn't a deluded crackpot but a sage patriot and overall mensch.
Frankly, I think it's both. Almost every stupid, misinformed person I know is a Fox News viewer...and every single one of them gets even dumber each year."
UPDATE III
The world according to Fox
* On his radio show last week, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck alleged that 10 per cent of the world's Muslims are terrorists, asking "why isn't this receiving coverage?" The reason: the real figure is closer to 0.1 per cent.
* Last November, Fox host Gregg Jarrett told viewers to marvel at "huge crowds" attending the launch of Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue. Accompanying his spiel was footage of crowds watching Ms Palin speak. But that footage had been shot during the 2008 presidential election. The network later apologised for misleading viewers, blaming a "production error".
* A year ago, Republican lawmakers held a rally in Washington opposing Barack Obama's healthcare reform. Fox Host Sean Hannity spoke wistfully of the vast turnout of "between 20,000 and 45,000 people". But eagle-eyed viewers noted that crowds depicted on screen were in fact attendees at an entirely different (and much larger) event which had taken place in the Capitol two months earlier. Hannity later apologised for "an inadvertent mistake".
* During the 2004 election, Fox's Chief Political Correspondent, Carl Cameron, quoted Democrat candidate John Kerry calling himself a "metrosexual" who enjoyed getting manicures. One problem: the quote was fabricated. A spokesman for the network later apologised: "Carl Cameron made a stupid mistake, and he has been reprimanded for his lapse in judgement."
FOX News cheats, misrepresents, lies, then gets caught and is forced to apologize . And their viewers keep coming back for more. What does that say about the crowd who watches this fake cable news station?
24 comments:
Thanks for the link. At this point, I'm not sure this country can survive Fox's war on truth - at least not as a place worth living in.
•91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs[.....etc.]
Thing is, any Foxtards reading this are bound to react by saying they're right about all this stuff and that everyone else is misinformed for believing otherwise.
Remember, this is largely the "Earth is 6,000 years old" crowd we're talking about. Reality isn't their strong point.
No one should rely on television as their chief source of information.
Fox viewers want to be misinformed: They're interested only in "news" that supports their biases and world view.
Someone once sent me an article from the Fox News web site as proof fairness and balance, presumably because the article was written in a bland journalistic style. It didn't take long to spot the bias, though: 90% of the expert opinions cited came from conservatives.
No one should rely on television as their chief source of information.
Of course not. They should rely on my blog:-)
Seriously, I suspect that TV news has always been biased and promoted a particular world-view -- not so much by favoring a specific slant, but by choosing what was and wasn't "news" at all. If something wasn't on the TV news, it didn't matter, didn't exist. Print journalism could cover a wider range, but its audience was smaller and limited to those willing to pay for a particular publication. A few TV networks controlled what reached the mass public mind.
The internet has utterly blown that monopoly up. Instead of three conduits, there are millions, each as easily accessible as network TV. When the media ignore something people are concerned about, or promote and obvious slant, they don't have the last word any more.
This study on the bias of Fox and the ignorance of its viewers, now rapidly spreading across the blogosphere, is an example.
Most Foxtards don't read liberal blogs, but their odds of running into someone who's read about the study are pretty high. The bubbles are, at least, getting more permeable.
I thought this comment found over at Booman Tribune was apt:
"I think it is more a case that there is a certain cultural subset of people in this country who are very comfortable tuning into FOX because it confirms their innate biases. I see it around here as almost a tribal sort of thing. FOX News is on the TV in every place around here that is not exclusively a Sports venue. Coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, bars, carry-outs; they play FOX round the clock. No matter where you go when you are going about your daily chores or leisure time activities, FOX is playing somewhere in the background. You are never far from it's din. It is exactly like the perpetually running telescreens in Orwell's 1984.
And people around here can connect easily with other people who are a part of the in-group (tribe) because they all share that commonality. It is the same psychology of confirmation bias that anyone uses who wants to control someone who is part of the group. You dare not challenge the orthodoxy of the group or you risk being cast, at best, as an outsider. Or, at worst as a radical threat to the stability of the group. And you can, in the worst case scenario, risk physical harm.
This can happen in any group, really. In the case of FOX viewers, though, they tend to be white, Protestant and older. Those are the major characteristics of their particular tribe. And most in this group see their world through a common lens of backgrounds and experiences."
I was going to ask my gym to turn it off until I found out that it was a requirement that Fox always be on.
From what I've seen, it reminds me of the 700 Club: Reporters and anchors reciting the dumbest statements as if their source was the World Almanac.
K,
Who makes it a "requirement" that FAUX NOOZ always is on?
Regarding Fox News and the subject of climate change: The Fox propaganda channel has a giant megaphone they are using to drown out scientific discussion . Fox employs a group of verbal bullies (I'm looking at you Billo and Beck). They hijack the conversation because they talk louder than anyone in the scientific community. Fox bobbleheads intimidate any scientist that comes on to counter their preconceived ideas.
Is climate change happening? In January, a poll among 3146 earth scientists found that 90 percent believe global warming is real.
Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin think not. But they also believe the Earth is only 6000 years old and fossils were put on the planet by the devil to trick scientists.
Whose opinion are YOU going with?
If you say something enough times from a seemingly prominent perch, soon people will begin to believe it and repeat it as true.
Let's remember the esteemed Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada who declared there was sharia law in cities in the US.
When asked to explain her source, she answered that she did not know, she had just heard it somewhere. FOX News maybe?
Who can say, but a central tenant of conservative thought is that there is no need to be curious, except to buttress your arguments...
The gym is privately owned; the owners can have the TVs turned to whatever channels they want.
you already know my theory. Stupid people are just out breeding smart people. Perhaps we should pay Mensas to think less and copulate more!@
As far as why you always see Fox on tv's at McDonalds, BK, and your local gym, Fox actually subsidizes some of the cost of their cable access, but they have to agree to broadcast only Fos News. Roger Ales really is the new Josef Goebels.
Just preparing a Facebook rant on this very suvject.
GWB,
I didn't know that about FOX subsidizing cable access. Do you have a link to verify this?
It's is incomprehensible to me that rational people don't see through the propaganda being pumped over cable by this organization.
Thanks for stopping by.
LOL! Rational people do see it!
K,
I know a number of people who are in every other capacity what I would call rational, but they watch FOX News. I don't understand this.
While reading this story, I was reminded of a character from a classic motion picture from the 1980's.
I think today "Otto" is either a member of the RNC, or a self described Tea Party Patriot, but more likely an executive at Faux News.
"•91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs"
It did in my area. There was one road project labelled as being part of the stimulus. The "workers" did a lousy job of it, working only a few hours a day, blocking access to businesses. Killed off a nice pizza place.
----
About "38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP"
I have found this fact on many places without ever seeing it on Fox (Yes, I don't play Limbaugh-like games, and properly spell the names of things).. Most Republicans DID oppose it:
"The vote to release the TARP funding was pretty much along party lines, with most Democrats voting to release the funding. Below a list of the exceptions."
Media Matters, a hard-left media commentary organization, noted this fact in an anti-Limbaugh article as well in which they described how many Republicans, although a minority, supported TARP.
Carl Cameron's a real piece of work.
One anecdote than someone heard from someone who heard can't extrapolated to a conclusion about something as vague as an "area," much less to an implication about the entire county. Senate approved TARP by a 74-25 bipartisan vote, with Democrats supporting is 41-10 and Republicans opposing it 33-15. If you can make that out to be significant Republican opposition when 70% of the caucus supported the bill -- which wound up costing less then 10% of the original project, something I doubt FOX viewers know -- I'd like to hear it.
Don't forget that friend of a friend knew someone who once had a brother-in-law (or cousin) who was a union member and learned first-hand that those who weren't just lazy were outright criminals.
Some things are just obvious K.
8D
LOL! Well, there's that!
K said: "and Republicans opposing it 33-15."
So why is that one claim even in this list.
And Arthur, actually... my best friend was threatened by a union steward for not wanting to make political contributions.
That's what happens when you take bread off of peoples' tables.
For example. that's why a screaming hysterical mob of racist whites looking for an angry fix raged incoherently at a hero of the civil rights movement: They thought he was taking bread of their tables and giving it to undeserving minorities. Of course, they were wrong and blinded by the white in this case, but I'm sure that now you understand the principle.
Humans in every walk of life don't always behave as they should. The world isn't a perfect place.
But one thing that makes it a little more tolerable is the right of workers to organize.
Post a Comment