Fake Study Gets It Right: Says Fox News Viewers Have A Lower IQ Than Average Americans

A press release was published this morning on Yahoo! News with a provocative headline declaring that an “Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average.” The article went on to assert that “Americans who watch Fox News have an average IQ of 80.”

Idiot Fox NewsThe underlying conclusions of this “study” are affirmed by research conducted by a number of reputable organizations including the University of Maryland, NBC/Wall Street Journal, and the Sunlight Foundation. Unfortunately, this study, and the “Intelligence Institute,” appear to be figments of some prankster’s imagination. There is no evidence that the institute exists and the sole source for the Yahoo! item is a press release that contains no verifiable identifying data.

Nevertheless, the perpetrator of this hoax seems to have a solid grasp on the cognitive capacity of Fox News viewers even if no study was conducted to document it. As noted above, plenty of other real studies arrived at the same conclusions. Here are some key “findings” by the imaginary Intelligence Institute:

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100.

One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula.

Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand, may frighten or anger them.” He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”

The allegation that Fox News exploits their audience’s tendency to voraciously consume absurdly spun tales driven by fear has been documented by researchers at the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (and yes, that’s real). Conservatives regularly demonstrate their proclivity for barking at the outrageous falsehoods proffered by Fox and other conservative fabulists. Among the university’s findings were that the brains of conservatives are more likely to have an enlarged amygdala which is associated with greater inflexibility, emotion, and fear response. This could account for conservatives having a greater susceptibility to conspiracy models of thinking as evidenced by this collection of right-wing crackpottery.

The editors at Yahoo! may have been fooled by this phony press release, but the bigger fools are those who watch and believe the certifiable nonsense that is broadcast every day on Fox News. It is difficult to ascertain whether watching Fox News actually makes the viewer stupid, or if stupid people are attracted to Fox News in the first place. Either way, neither Fox nor their audience should be taken as seriously as Yahoo! took this press release.

[Update:} The Huffington Post contacted the “PR guru” who is responsible for the phony press release. He admits that much of what is in the release is false, but maintains that a study of some sort was actually conducted. I doubt it. The misstatements to which he admits pretty much kill his credibility, and his alternate explanations are no more believable than his original BS. It is nonetheless, pretty funny. And none of the dubious claims from this huckster diminish the bona fide studies cited above.

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19 thoughts on “Fake Study Gets It Right: Says Fox News Viewers Have A Lower IQ Than Average Americans

  1. The Intelligence Institute is apparently a real organization at Western Illinois University. I expect that someone from the group will issue a press release denying that they had anything to do with this hoax.

  2. The fake study is a fake study. Period. Once again, the left-wing can only spew insults and lies and hate.

    • You must mean ‘the FAKE left-wing can only spew FAKE insults and FAKE lies and FAKE hate.’ Nice leap of faith regarding a fake study perpetrated by the ‘left-wing.’

      • i like how everything is fake to you guys except for an imaginary dude in the sky as depicted by a self contradicting bronze age book. “FAKE lies” lol you seem to be proving these “FAKE insults” to be true after all. Lies and hate huh? <3 Good job with all the hate filled stupid that spewed from your empty head and onto the screen <3 you are very entertaining.

        • Nice rant. Whatever it’s about, you sound very sincere.

  3. Isn’t the real story here that Yahoo News was happy to publish a story about a story that was not vetted or corroborated? That is what a journalists are supposed to do, right?

    Isn’t this report the same thing you spend your days and nights criticizing FOX News for?

    Isn’t your silence on this evidence of your own bias?

    Won’t part of your response to this be that this is an anomaly for Yahoo, whereas this type of “lying” is written into FOX News’ charter?

    • First of all, I did criticize it. I explicitly noted that “The editors at Yahoo! may have been fooled by this phony press release…”

      However, that isn’t really fair to the editors. This was a press release and not news story. No journalism was involved or implied.

      In point of fact, Yahoo publishes tens of thousands of press releases and does not pretend to check every one of them. They are signatories to a wire service and the items they receive are posted automatically without any endorsement of their content. Yahoo very deliberately rejects the role of gatekeeper. Press releases from all sorts of sources (liberal, conservative, political, entertainment, sports, whatever) are posted and it is not meant to be construed as hard news. It is just a service to the organization that distributes the releases and is administered with complete neutrality.

      I find it a bit ridiculous that you would focus your attention on this non-issue about Yahoo, and try to compare it to what Fox does.

      • You’re right, Mark. Yahoo bears no responsibility for this story. It was just regurgitating some press release from some wire service. Just like you — regurgitating a story that was regurgitated from some wire service without any regard for its fakeness. The fact that it was disparaging FOX News viewers made it blogworthy for you. But the Obamaphone lady — now there’s an enlightened voter whose IQ clearly surpasses that of any FOX viewer. Any depiction of her is obviously racist and serves as propaganda for the dimwits who watch FOX News.

        • What the fuck are talking about? I haven’t regurgitated anything. Your inane assertion and bizarre, off-topic references are beginning to make me think that your brain synapses are failing. Your comment makes no sense at all.

          • For such a smart guy, you have an uncanny ability to not see a point. As usual, your default position is to discount anybody with a different viewpoint and to characterize them as stupid or incapable of understanding your point of view.

            My inferior intellect notwithstanding, I don’t understand how you will use even an unvetted press release to further your narrative against anything FOX News or FOX-like. Bizarre, indeed.

          • Bullshit you weren’t puking out some totally fake bullshit that pleased you, “Mark.” You’re a doctrinaire left-wing dope who puts ideology above truth. There are *NO* legitimate academic studies that have documented a statistically significant difference in IQ between conservatives and leftists. There are low IQ adherents to both sides of the spectrum. The difference between low IQ conservatives and low IQ leftists is that the conservatives at least aren’t do-nothing parasites.

            • How could I be “puking out some totally fake bullshit” when I’m the one who called it fake right in the headline? And obviously you haven’t bothered to click on the links to the legitimate studies I provided.

              Can you conservative “dopes” even read?

    • Dude, really? Did you actually read his part of the article. Fully read through before commenting. Silence now equals bias… um, have you taken a look around you lately, some people have lives beyond the internet. And it is kind of busy time for many people due to those things called “Holiday’s”.

      All “news” networks due have a copy/paste mentality anymore. I can read the same bloody article on 2 to 3 different sites, and they are nearly identical wording and even paragraphing.

      “lying” is not in the Fox news charter, what is in it is that you speak the daily points that you are given by the higher ups. You pull the GOP line regardless of what you want. They are nothing but propaganda for the right wing. And when someone actually say’s something about it on air, they get cut off and end the interview early. The, don’t pay attention to the guy behind the curtain, ploy.

      • Hawk,

        Cable news is biased. That’s obvious…except to those on the Left who believe FOX is the only Boogeyman in the cable space.

  4. The story is a fake, and “Mark” is an idiot for saying that the conclusion of the fake study is true anyway. No valid study has ever shown such a conclusion. The difference between low IQ conservatives and low IQ leftists is, the low IQ conservatives tend not to be parasites.

  5. Jesus, apparently you need to start using ‘lol’ or some shit in order to signal that you’re making a joke out of something. Well, even then I guess their responses would be purely emotional lightning jerk reactions.

  6. Anytime NBC / Wall street Journal and a left wing college like MU who pay bribe donations to the liberal end of congress get involved in any studies of an organization and it’s followers that’s against libtrard media that take money from the government that allow a forfeit of freedom of information by allowing the C.I.A. to come in and audit their content to make any changes including cut and tape of film to change the content information can’t be trusted. Anybody that would even believe these sources and trust it coming from Yahoo News where Bill Gates is the biggest Governmental Nazi there is, have got to be the ones with a low IQ. I mean come on, the guy develops a chat site that was made to hack into peoples computers, there’s sites all over the place on how to hack Yahoo Chats created by Yahoo chats and a while back there was a site posted where Yahoo was looking to hire people that where yahoo chat hackers, so yeah Yahoo news is really the place to get coherent information right? My tail pipe! Here’s a study it don’t take a genius to figure out.

    Most people that go along with libtard media are those living off of gov paychecks begging for socialism, are so high up on the food chain they are begging for the ability to screw their workers, and those that are so out of touch with the real world thinking just cause Uncle told them a story while sitting on his lap thinking the thing popping up was the conversation, that it must be true. <—- LMAO Sorry for the MSNBC style jab.

    Anyway yeah, I think it's about time libtards get a real life and accept the constitution for what it really is, A lawful fair document created for those who want to make a life for them selves and not for lying moronic idiots that actually are dense enough to think these studies hold any merit just because their lazy D_Heads that feel just because they breath everyone owes them some thing.

    Good by losers!

    • Thanks for the laugh. I haven’t read anything this funny all year.

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