Yes, watching FOX News actually makes you less informed than if you didn't watch it at all.
According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.
Respondents to the survey were able to answer correctly an average of 1.8 of 4 questions about international news and 1.6 out of 5 questions about domestic affairs. “Based on these results, people who don’t watch any news at all are expected to answer correctly on average 1.22 of the questions about domestic politics, just by guessing or relying on existing basic knowledge,” said Dan Cassino, the poll’s analyst.
“The study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly,” wrote Cassino and his colleagues. “The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly—a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly.” LinkAnd lest you think this is an outlier, it's not even the first study that showed this result.
FOX News, it's like a stupid ray aimed at your head.
3 comments:
This is confusing correlation with causation. Rather than being a stupid ray aimed at your head, Fox News may be more like a stupidity magnet.
That may be true. I would hope that the multiple studies would have corrected for that.
Causation may be supported by them measuring how "informed" people are. It doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're getting false information, then you'll be less informed.
Have you clicked all the way through to the actual study? There are some interesting results. For example, conservatives who got their news only from Fox did better than liberals who got their news only from Fox, and both did better than conservatives who used only MSNBC.
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