{"id":3409,"date":"2010-12-13T16:02:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T00:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2011-07-27T16:26:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T23:26:22","slug":"study-confirms-that-fox-news-makes-you-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3409","title":{"rendered":"Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>[Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/media\/149193\/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid\/\" target=\"_blank\">AlterNet<\/a> for reprinting this article]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3478\/3834292291_d216e5700a_o.jpg\" alt=\"Idiot Fox\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"250\" \/>Yet another study has been released that proves 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, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldpublicopinion.org\/pipa\/articles\/brunitedstatescanadara\/671.php?nid=&#038;id=&#038;pnt=671&#038;lb=\" target=\"_blank\">conducted a survey<\/a> of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What&#8217;s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldpublicopinion.org\/pipa\/articles\/international_security_bt\/102.php?nid=&#038;id=&#038;pnt=102&#038;lb=brusc\" target=\"_blank\">previous PIPA study<\/a> that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1370\" target=\"_blank\">NBC\/Wall Street Journal poll<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just aint so:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>91% believe that the stimulus legislation lost jobs.<\/li>\n<li>72% believe that the health reform law will increase the deficit.<\/li>\n<li>72% believe that the economy is getting worse.<\/li>\n<li>60% believe that climate change is not occurring.<\/li>\n<li>49% believe that income taxes have gone up.<\/li>\n<li>63% believe that the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.<\/li>\n<li>56% believe that Obama initiated the GM\/Chrysler bailout.<\/li>\n<li>38% believe that most Republicans opposed TARP.<\/li>\n<li>63% believe that Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming their viewers and they are doing it for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. They 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 they can brag about it.<\/p>\n<p>The conclusions in this study need to be disseminated as broadly as possible. Fox&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>This is not an isolated review of Fox&#8217;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 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 that they do not get away with it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3059\" target=\"_blank\">Addendum<\/a>:]<\/strong> The folks at OurFuture had previously addressed some of the issues above and provided documentation that effectively debunks the myths.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Update:]<\/strong> Michael Clemente, Fox News senior vice president of news editorial, <a href=\"http:\/\/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/12\/17\/study-some-viewers-were-misinformed-by-tv-news\/\" target=\"_blank\">dismissed the study&#8217;s findings<\/a> in a statement to the New York Times:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having <em>&#8216;Students Who Study The Least&#8217;<\/em> and being the <em>&#8216;Best Party School&#8217;<\/em> \u2013 given these fine academic distinctions, we&#8217;ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was &#8216;researched&#8217; with.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Clemente obviously prefers the snarky retort to the substantive rebuttal, and clearly has no affinity for the truth. Rather than addressing the data in the study&#8217;s results, Clemente chose to viciously smear the UM student body who had nothing to do with it. And when the Times fact-checked his response they discovered that the Princeton Review actually ranks the University of Maryland among the <em>&#8220;Best Northeastern Colleges,&#8221;<\/em> and it only made it to 19th on the list of <em>&#8220;Best Party Schools.&#8221;<\/em> So even in their response Fox affirmed the conclusions in the study by continuing to misinform. At least they&#8217;re consistent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Thanks to AlterNet for reprinting this article] Yet another study has been released that proves 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[922,33,850],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-alternet","tag-fox-news","tag-pipa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-SZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4586,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4586","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":0},"title":"News Corpse Part Of Soros-Funded Echo Chamber?","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/6\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The ultra-rightist Media Research Center has just completed its four part series purporting to reveal the truth about the George Soros domination of the media. The series was authored by the MRC's Boone Pickens Fellow, Dan Gainor. The first three parts of Gainor's project were laughably muddled dissertations on an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10090,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10090","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":1},"title":"Self-Inflicted Truth: Fox Nation Bashes Fox News As &#8216;Ridiculously Fact-Free&#8217;","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/9\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Just how determined is Fox Nation, the lie-riddled Fox News community web site, in its mission to slander anything and everything connected to liberal politics and media? Apparently they are so determined that they don't care if they publish devastatingly negative representations of their pals down the hall at Fox\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9037,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9037","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":2},"title":"Fox News Freak-Outs: How The Big Bully Of Cable News Fizzles Under Fire","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/20\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In the cable news business there is one network that relentlessly boasts about its prominence and formidable presence above all others. Fox News is clearly taken with itself and is even promoted in their own ads as \"The Most Powerful Name In News.\" That makes it all the more curious\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4501,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4501","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":3},"title":"Understatement Of The Year: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/23\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In an article published in New York Magazine, Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News is reported to have told colleagues that he thinks Sarah Palin is an idiot and unhelpful to the conservative movement. Really? Gosh, we never knew. But to be fair, there was a lot more of interest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21077,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=21077","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":4},"title":"New Study Explains Why Fox News Is Obsessed With Sex And Porn","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/12\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Media observers have not missed the preponderance of titillating and sexually suggestive content that permeates so much of the Fox News broadcast day. The on-air personalities who are young, blonde women far outnumber their ratio of the population at large. Ironically Fox has a program called \"Outnumbered\" that features four\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Megyn Kelly","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/megyn-kelly-gq2-550px.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/megyn-kelly-gq2-550px.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/megyn-kelly-gq2-550px.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":44953,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=44953","url_meta":{"origin":3409,"position":5},"title":"Study Shows Higher Rates of Coronavirus Deaths Linked to Watching Sean Hannity","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/22\/2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Anyone who has observed how Donald Trump and Fox News have portrayed the emergence and spread of the coronavirus for the past few months cannot help but notice their trivialization of the pandemic threat. They have contradicted the health experts who have been issuing dire warnings all along. They have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox News, Sean Hannity","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-hannity-scared.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-hannity-scared.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-hannity-scared.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5033,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions\/5033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}