STUDY: Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5

Quote :

Media outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC have a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge while NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative sources of news, according to Fairleigh Dickinson University’s newest PublicMind survey.

Researchers asked 1,185 random nationwide respondents what news sources they had consumed in the past week and then asked them questions about events in the U.S. and abroad.

On average, people correctly answered 1.6 of 5 questions about domestic affairs.

Because the aim of the study was to isolate the effects of each type of news source, they then controlled for variables such as other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors.

They found that someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer 1.04 domestic questions correctly compared to 1.22 for those who watched no news at all. Those watching only "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" answered 1.42 questions correctly and people who only listened to NPR or only watched Sunday morning political talk shows answered 1.51 questions correctly...

...It is a follow-up to a 2011 survey of 612 New Jerseyans that found, among other things, that those who watched Fox News were 18 points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all.

I've always been of the opinion that if you look at a wide variety of news sources you might have a chance at understanding what is really going on. I don't "watch" any news shows but scan a lot of internet news sources - I prefer a good newspaper but there isn't one in Pensacola! I look at the following daily:

Reuters
BBC
Washington Times
Washington Post
NY Times
Fox (U.S. News portion)
CNN
Google News also provides a variety of news sources in one place and updates pretty frequently

Like you, Nochain, I get my news from a variety of sources and make up my own mind as to bias.

The study shows that people that narrow their news from only one source are doing themselves a disservice... even the people that only watch or listen to NPR test lower than people that get their news from multiple sources.

I agree with the article completely.  I have a friend who is retired from teaching school and she is a very intelligent person.  However, last Saturday when she was at my house, she made the comment that Barack Obama was trying to figure out a way around the constitution so he could run again for POTUS.  There's no intelligent news source out there that has reported such a thing. Comments like hers come from the talking heads on Fox and from the e-mails that spread around the internet constantly. I don't think it's so much the actual news stories on Fox that cause this kind of confusion, I think it's the commentators who outnumber the actual reporters by what seem to be the hundreds. They have no interest in the truth, like Limbaugh they consider themselves "culture warriors." We used to have a radio host here in Pensacola who used that reply when he was caught telling a falsehood on the air. He didn't have to be accurate, he said, because he was not a newsman he was a "culture warrior." I think of them as more the enemies of culture than anything else.
These inbreds have infested our so called "news networks" for too long, and exist on both sides of the spectrum. They turn otherwise intelligent people into people who make statements like the one my friend made Saturday.

BTW, the real sad thing about the survey is that all the Americans in the survey averaged less than 2 out of 5 questions correctly.

The worst thing is that they VOTE!!!!!

The questions:



ANSWER: Democrat



ANSWER: Mitt Romney



ANSWER: Yes (depending on when the question was asked)



ANSWER: No



ANSWER: Germany

I'd have gotten 4 out of 5. I have to admit to not caring which country in Europe put out the most money to bail the others out.

THOSE are the questions that Americans could not average 2/5 correct?? God help us. 

Like you guys, I do not watch the news, I read from a variety of sources via Google News. I particularly like the Christian Science Monitor... it's a pretty good paper.

riceme wrote:

THOSE are the questions that Americans could not average 2/5 correct?? God help us. 

Like you guys, I do not watch the news, I read from a variety of sources via Google News. I particularly like the Christian Science Monitor... it's a pretty good paper.

I agree with you. The Christian Science Monitor is an amazingly good paper.

I don't watch it either. I start here:

http://www.veryquiet.com/news.php?category=world_news&format=compact_small&language=en&target=new

Of note, CNN laid off over thirty journalists at the end of the year and I have noticed that their website headline page now reads like The National Enquirer. The night the protests really turned deadly in Ukraine, their big news was that Dennis Rodman was entering rehab.