FOX VIEWERS: NOT THE BRIGHTEST BULBS ON THE TREE

 

A third party organization has made my point clearer than I ever could.

I just had to write about this item which is one of my favorite subjects:  “Viewers that only watch Fox News”.

Fairleigh Dickinson University, a private, nonsectarian university, located in the very Blue state of New Jersey, they recently performed their PublicMind Survey to determine the effect on those individuals that only use one news source for obtaining their local and international news.

The way the survey works, the pollsters find out which source is the respondent’s primary news outlet, then they ask the individual 5 current domestic news questions and 5 current international news questions.

In this particular survey, they asked 1,185 randomly selected respondents these same questions, and the results were pretty much as would be expected for anyone that is serious about obtaining the latest news.

What I found both amusing and reasonable was the final statement from the university team that took the survey, once all the results were tabulated.

That statement was: Watching only Fox News makes you less informed on domestic affairs than if you were watching no news programs at all.

So, why was that the statement?

The survey found that those who watched only Fox News answered only 1.04 domestic questions correctly.  That’s compared to 1.22 correct answers for those who watched no news programs at all. 

The overall average of correct answers for all those in the survey was 1.65 correct answers.  The best single rating in the survey came from (as expected), those respondents that only went to NPR (National Public Radio) and of those that watched the Sunday political TV programs.  These respondents answered 1.51 domestic question correctly.

As to the international affairs questions, the survey results were also very interesting.

The final statement for that question from the international survey results was also interesting: Watching only Fox News and MSNBC for international news makes you less informed than watching no news programs at all.

Yep, if all you watch is either the conservatives on Fox, or the liberals on MSNBC, you are less informed than if you watched no news programs at all.

In this case, watching no news gave us 1.28 correct international question answered.  For MSNBC and Fox, they had 1.23 and 1.08 correct answers respectively.  As before, NPR was also the winner in this category with 1.97 correct answers.

What was also interesting was that those that watched comedian Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and those that listened to all forms of talk radio, they also did better than the No News Watchers, or Fox or MSNBC viewers. 

 

The Fox and MSNBC results for the international questions were 1.6 and 1.57 correct answers respectively.  And the Daily Show and talk radio groups also did better than Fox and MSNBC on the domestic questions.

The key is that getting all your information from one source, even NPR, is not the best solution.

Personally, I try to regularly read the NY TIMES, the Washington Post, occasionally the Wall Street Journal, will watch Jon Stewart, as well as “Hardball” and “Rachael Maddow” on MSNBC.  I listen to both conservative and liberal talk radio, use various internet sites such as the Huffington Post & Alternet News, I read the local papers, and listen to POTUS on satellite radio, just to name a few.

Anyone interested in being a functional part of a democratic nation needs good information.  And it won’t come from just one news source…..that’s guaranteed.
 

As the university survey team concluded,  “The most popular of the national media sources, Fox, CNN, & MSNBC, they are the least informative sources.  Don’t get all your info-eggs from just one info-basket.”

(Actually, the real final question I have is: “Why was the best scoring group (NPR) of the survey still unable to answer 3 of the 5 questions….?)

Therefore,  once again I rest my case.

Below are the two graphs for the survey’s answers to both the domestic and the international affairs questions:

 

 



 

Copyright G.Ater  2015