Get this: Fox News is — gasp! — not all that informative, according to Fairleigh Dickinson University’s latest PublicMind poll.
The poll — which asked New Jerseyans where they find news and information about current events — found that Sunday morning news shows are the most informative, while Fox News actually leads people to be less informed than those who consume no news at all.
The poll focused partly on popular uprisings in Egypt and Syria. Asked whether the people of Egypt successfully topped Hosni Mubarak’s regime, 49 percent of Fox News viewers answered “yes” — the lowest on the scale — while 68 percent of NPR listeners answered in the affirmative, the highest on the scale.
Those who watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart performed well on the questions. Sixty percent of Daily Show viewers correctly answered that opposition forces in Syria have not yet toppled the government, second only to NPR. Forty-five percent of Fox News viewers answered “no.”
“The (poll’s) results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” said Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the poll.
The results probably won’t come as much of a shock. In December, TPM reported that a University of Maryland study showed that daily Fox News viewers were the most misinformed, regardless of political party.
Read the Fairleigh Dickinson poll below:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind Poll
David Taintor
David Taintor is the Front Page Editor at TPM, where he contributes to TPM's Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
Fox also has 3 to 4 times the viewers than the competition.....and twice as many Democrats and liberals than the competition ( believe it or not....it's percentages dummy ) ....That being said.....if you have 47% of several million , it is still better than 68% of a few thousand....The 8 people who watch NPR must be VERY informed.
Mike Henderson you made these "facts" up just like Fox News does.
One poll. Selection bias. POLITIFACT says FALSE:
az_anyad Actually that report specifically refers to the Pew Report, and the worldopinion.org polls which Jon Stewart used as the basis for his comment. The worldopinion.org polls were listed as being of varying quality, while the Pew polls were not well regarded at all.
This is a different poll, and asks a set of questions which are more about general knowledge of world affairs, without knowing the specifics of the name of politician A or whatever. And then ties those results to where the person indicates they get their information from.
Without an analysis of this polls methodology we can't be sure if its any more accurate than the Pew polls, but neither can it be simply dismissed because another poll was determined to have a poor methodology.
az_anyad you're link is about a comment that Jon Stewart said. politifact states: "the way john stewart phrased his comment... [that] they, [fox news viewers] are "consistently" misinformed, is untrue." if this was to somehow prove a point, I'm not following you...
Let's see now...yes...I agree.. Fox news viewers ARE less informed. When the viewer cuts through all the BS, people arguing and talking over one another, speculation, speculation, speculation, what is left?...nothing, again, but the BS. The saddest part is about the people who take all this crap as the gospel truth. I stopped watching these shows a long time ago because quite frankly, they give me a headache.
I wonder if there is a self-selection bias here. Perhaps there's a problem with Fox News viewers to start with. Who in their right mind would sit down and choose to watch it? -- someone who's uninformed.
No poll was needed to determine that regular Fox viewers were less intelligently informed than a person that has lived in an isolated cave for the last 20 years .
And by their own admission too:
Fox always held out that it gives the other side of the story.
Accordingly, if every other News Organization reports that Mubarak was ousted, they report that he wasn't.
If the other News Organization report "Facts", they must report "Fiction".
Etc.
LOL. Up to date not ONE fake-truth believer ever displays ' facts versus lies' side by side from fox news. ( I looked hard though)
Quote it and correct it, your site will have top hit, guaranteed
What ok, Fairleigh Dickinson sure sounds prestigious and credible.
Fairleigh Dickinson University sounds prestigious!
Fox "news" should be called Fox Propaganda. I don't know how anyone thinks it is real news. Are people really that stupid? Sadly, the answer is yes.
FOX NEWS is a joke in my country. FOX NEWS aint any programe with news, it's a programe with.... entertainment and nothing else. Real journalists laughin at FOX NEWS but FOX is DANGEROUS! FOX spreading lies and misinformation. FOX IS A TOOL FOR PROPAGANDA!!
Just proves the point so many people have been making. Fox News isn't about news. It's about ratings and retarded stories like Dogs on skateboards. Not only that, but Fox actively filters what information we get at the behest of the government.
In a perfect world it would be alright to criticize FOX NEWS if MSNLSD did not exists. They put on Al Sharpton for gods sake. What a joke this story is.
If you look at the ratings Fox News is BY FAR the most popular cable news outlet
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/11/21/cable-...
So if I were a advertiser just looking for eyeballs on the screen, this is where I would advertise. Also If I were an advertiser looking for a gullible audience that would buy anything that I put out there, this is where I would advertise.
Fox News, the perfect advertising outlet.
No, the real answer, dillwad, is that biased liberal polls that give the public false informaion will get that false information parroted right back at them. Did the "Egyptian people overthrow the GOVERNMENT of Hosni Mubarak?" Hell, NO! The government was run by the military and the people did not kick the military out of power.
The "Egyptian People?" Realy? Try the Muslim Brotherhood along with the stab-in-the-back Barack Obama and his worldwide "radical community organizers" are the ones who got Mubarak to step down? YES. How many of the Fairleigh Dickenson elite would know that?
Zippo.
If people want simple, stupid, slanted, incorrect answers, then, by all means, stick to reading the New Your Slimes.
polarik Points for being funny. Have to deduct a few though as the judges figured it was unintentional.
We'll just have to laugh with you and at you.
I know I shouldn't do this, but just for sheer entertainment, could you cite some sources for those truthy little nuggets? Please?
Hilarious (in an ironic way) that people still try and pull that "liberal media" nonsense. Have you seen the misinformation and mis reporting the past months about the OWS effort? Nothing "liberal" or "left leaning" about their just as denigrating coverage of the OWS protesters than Fauz News or any "right wing" outlets... polarik
polarik ^Clearly a Fox News viewer
Brian Rosspolarik Sort of proves the accuracy of the poll, doesn't it.
polarik This is a good example of exactly what this poll's results said. Not only do they not have correct information, they are hostile to the very idea of facts, science, or objective anything. Fox news doesn't make people less informed. Those who watch Fox news are just willfully ignorant, and they go to Fox for validation.
polarik You are a joke! US is going down hard because of people like you. Stupid, ignorant and lied to and you belive the shit!
Thanks for providing the perfect example of the mis-informed Fox viewer.
Curious: do you think it was a good or bad that Muberak stepped down?
polarik Yes, you're right. Every respectable news outlet in the world is wrong and Fox is right. Incidentally, I have a bridge in New York that I'm selling stock in. Want some?
@Kristy Miller @polarik I worked as a journalist for 13 years. When I left my last position, that newsroom of nearly 200 people lost 100 percent of its openly conservative reporters. I knew one other conservative and he hid the fact out of fear it would hurt his career. That is the nature of the news industry.
polarik You think the average Fox viewer was sidelined by these niceties?
polarik Mostly at you. I don't care how many lines on Glenn Beck'd chalkboard connect to them, the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole is as dangerous as a bunch of Shriners.
Your Fair and Balance Lies (Fix News) are producing a Dumb Audience!
Fox News. <s>Fair and Balanced</s> Dumb and Dumber.
I'm truly shocked!
The pollster started with New Jerseyans. Need I say more?
Fox News is like a roach motel for morons.
Some people might go there to study moron behavior.
The findings of this poll don't escape the huge margins of error for each of the sub-groups. The average wrong answer % for the Egypt question is around 20.5% - Fox News viewers got 24%, which is exactly at the bottom end of the margin of error for the entier population of the poll. For Fox News viewers, the margin of error will be much higher. In other words, the findings of this poll are statistically insignificant and meaningless.
Also, there's a difference between misinformed and uninformed. Fox News might not have spent much time on some of the issues in this poll, while others have. That's an inherent bias in the poll itself, an editorial bias.
To take the findings of this poll and extrapolate, as TPM does, to the finding "Fox News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Read No News", is dishonest and not supported by this poll. To make that a finding, you'd have to control for a lot more variables, you'd have to do a nationwide poll, you'd have to increase the population of the poll greatly, you'd have to ask a large and broad variety of questions as to not introduce any editorial bias.
But, as you'd expect, liberals will take the statistically insignificant findings from this tiny poll and use them evidence of what they already believed. Self-confirmation bias.
george.gooding Speaking of biased... you picked the one question that is within the 3.5% margin of error. You ignored all of the other questions. Talk about confirmation bias!
george.gooding Nice Cherry-picking of the one question inside the margin of error! And by the way, this poll is only one in many polls that have produced this result. And on a wide range of news subjects.
george.gooding Fox news trains it's morons well. Case in point, George Gooding.
george.gooding I was paying attention to you until I got to your last paragraph and saw your self-confirmation bias.
in new jersey we call fairleigh-dickenson university fairly ridiculous university. the sole requriement for entry into this school is to be able to come up with the money to pay tuition. as for fox news it is an opinion network set up for entertainment . its ratings are greater then their top 3 competitors combined. any relationship to hard news is purely coincidental. people watch what they enjoy. most americans, whether they watch any news or not, couldn't find egypt or syria on a map. once again, i bring you the truth.
jjdjjd That's super clever. You must come from the smart part of New Jersey.
FUX NEWS is a microcosm of society.
The candidates for natural selection "Darwinism" watch FUX and have their stupidity strengthened, reinforced.
People that may otherwise be considered "intelligent" watch FUX and their IQ plumets like jobs and the economy when the GOP gets elected.
Dumb people self-migrate to Fox News. Not really news here I suppose.
I'm not surprized. I like to check the comments section over on Fox News.com. Some pretty dopey stuff being posted. I do like to F with them sometimes,but I think most of them are 15 year old video game vets and some cranky old farts that still think USA is still fighting for truth,justice and the American way.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox anchor is a Stanford summa cum laude graduate who claimed not knowing what the words "ignoramus" and "czar" meant. Obviously, she knows, but Ailes & Fox can't tolerate an uppity female being seen by its viewers as smarter than the co-anchor guys. This anecdote is all you need to know to conclude that Fox should change its motto from "We report. You decide." It should be "Stupid is as stupid does" --Forrest Gump.
By the way, I watched "Good Night and Good Luck" the other night ... the excellent film about Edward R. Murrow taking on Joe McCarthy. In light of the current state of television news, with Fox leading the decline, it was very damn depressing.
jimloomis3 Time to watch Network again, if you can stand it.
The trouble is, Roger Ailes is pleased. Mission accomplished.
jimloomis3 exactly. an UNinformed electorate is their goal.
This poll was an absolute joke. Look at the questions before jumping on this bandwagon.
- Never asked what was PRIMARY source of news
- results based on 612 New Jersey-ites total.
- Posed subjective questions and added even more subjective interpretation of the results. Here's one question: "To the best of your knowledge, have th eopposition groups in Egypt been successful in brining down the regime there?" ...and most of the questions read like this, leaving open for interpretation just what is meant by "successful". For instance, the young leaders of the opposition effort have been ousted from any involvement with the elders who assumed leadership of the movement as soon as Mubarek was eliminated. It can be argued that these same elders are part of the original reppressime regime against which the young protesters were fighting. The protesters failed to achieve the freedoms which they sought and remain oppressed by a regime.
No matter this is an awful poll. HuffPo, WaPo, LA/NY Times all ran with stories they thought their readers would lap up like sheep...and they did.
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