On December 10, 2010, the University of Maryland released the results of a study conducted by World Public Opinion about the correctness or incorrectness of information that voters used to make decisions in advance of the mid-term elections. The study received a little coverage on MSNBC and accusations from Fox News that the University of Maryland was a party school with little or no academic credibility. It should have received far more coverage, but what with the Christmas holidays, the crowing of Republicans about their Congressional victories and the tragedy in Tucson, the story just faded away.
The study specifically tracked the levels of misinformation among American voters on significant issues and the recent history of those issues. What did people believe about the immediate and long term effects of the stimulus package, the immediate and long term effects of the health care law, the war in Afghanistan, the President’s birthplace, income taxes, TARP, how the two parties had voted on legislation involving these issues. In one way, the study was a small shock. Americans are far too misinformed for their own good. In another way, it wasn’t a surprise at all. Fox News viewers are the most misinformed consumers of news in America. Well, duh.
According to the study’s conclusions “Consumers of all sources of media evidenced substantial misinformation, suggesting that false or misleading information is widespread in the general information environment, just as voters say they perceive it to be. In most cases increasing exposure to news sources decreased misinformation; however, for some news sources on some issues, higher levels of exposure increased misinformation.”
The sources that were reviewed were newspapers and magazines (both print and on-line), network TV news, public broadcasting, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. All of these sources had consumers whose information was erroneous, which suggested that misinformation comes from the general culture more than from specific news media. Some of it, obviously, comes from the politicians themselves. That’s what the Citizens United case was all about, allowing corporations and the very rich to purchase attack ads Attack ads are notorious for their twisting of information, as in the case of the ads against Bernie Sanders during his Senatorial campaign. One set of ads claimed that Bernie’s votes in the House had favored rapists over their victims. The actual vote that was being cited was one on a procedural issue (closing debate) and not on the bill itself. That’s how attack ads work. They prey on the voters’ lack of understanding of the processes of government.
The study showed that the more people exposed themselves to the news, the less misinformed they were in general, but on certain issues, the reverse was true.
Fox News viewers came out at the top of the misinformed pile. They were more likely than the viewers of other media sources to believe all of the following misinformation:
* most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses
* most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit
* the economy is getting worse
* most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring
* the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
* their own income taxes have gone up
* the auto bailout only occurred under Obama
* when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it
* it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States
How much these lies were believed was in direct proportion to the amount of time people spent watching Fox. Even Democrats who watched Fox believed this misinformation, so it was not a matter of the viewer’s bias, but a matter of the networks bias.
MSNBC, NPR and PBS consumers did have one significant misinformation score. They believed that it had been proven that the Chamber of Commerce was using foreign money to fund attack ads in the election. This has not been proven because the Chamber refuses to open its books for examination. MSNBC corrected this while reporting on the study.
And the viewers of network news believed that the TARP bill was signed by President Obama instead of by President Bush, and believed that most Republicans had opposed it.
The study did not look at the internal operations of Fox News. That information has come out through whisteblowers within the network over the past few years. The Republican Party sends the network “talking points bulletins” to influence the “news” that Fox “reports.” The management at Fox directs all the programs to present disclaimer views to any news that might support a liberal position, i.e. if a news item explains how global warming is responsible for the heavy snow storms, the “reporters” must talk up those few scientists who say there is no global warming.
The study missed one important aspect of the mid-term election, the perceptions about illegal and legal immigration and the access that illegals have to government subsidies and programs. You have all heard the attacks on the administration claiming that they are soft on illegals, they want more illegals to increase their voter base, they are failing to protect our borders. What you almost never hear is the FACT that last year, half a million Mexicans were stopped at the border and another half-million illegals were arrested and deported, the highest numbers ever. Furthermore, you never hear any news media explain how entitlement programs function, who qualifies for what programs and how few illegals could even qualify if they had forged birth certificates because the vast majority of them are single men.
To read the whole report go to
www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa or google World Public Opinion Dec. 10 report.
