University of Maryland study : Foxnews viewers ignorant about Iraq war

Freak, I've seen several stories on this report and they're not all headlined to emphasize the Fox connection because that's not even the most interesting thing about the report. The most interesting thing about it is that so incredibly many Americans believe these incredibly false things. But you're right about one thing -- whether the report was intended to make Fox News look bad or not it absolutely made them look bad.

As for your BBC thing, it's exactly the same thing Mr. Clutch did. It's a deflection and a really very poor one. The analogy doesn't come close to matching. Responsibility for 9/11 is something that could never be quantified as a fact. If you want a better analogy, I'd suggest asking the left (or viewers of perceived left-leaning networks) if Saddam ever had WMD's. We all know he did -- that's a quantifiable fact. If you could make the case that BBC viewers believed he never had them (or that he had never gassed his own people or something), you'd have a point. Your suggested questions (and Mr. Clutch's) though, miss the point of the study entirely. I don't have to be in the mind of the study's authors to say your analogy (and his) are completely off-topic.

 

oops.

 

A) The purpose of the study was hardly to discredit Fox. For God's sake...they sampled hundreds of individual news outlets...and asked the viewers who viewed any of those outlets sampled if they believed any of three counterfactual statements about the war were true. In order to assume, God, that this was all done to discredit mighty Fox, you'd have to conclude that, IN ADVANCE, these people knew that of all the many media outlets they sampled, that Fox would far and away have the most viewers who believed untrue statements.

Here's the point, Freak...even if that were true ( and it's ridiculous to assume that a University would set up an entire study, dealing with thousands of respondents and hundreds of media outlets, just to discredut Fox, please) but even if you assume that to be the case, the fact that they would have had to know that Fox viewers would be far and way the most likely to respond inaccurately about Iraq proves the exact same point as the study...they're the ones who are out of touch with the reality of our basis for the war.



As for your BBC analogy, you are so far off it's not even funny.

A) The 'US caused 9-11 thing' was never a popularly held belief, but a best selling book...in France, not Britain. ANd no studies or polls support the fact that the population every agreed with the premise of the book. As such, the likelyhopod of 90% of BBC viewers believing something so absurd are absurd.

B) And, like it or not, the study asked questions about actually held beliefs...and those who watch Fox are by far the most likley to have an inaccurate perception of the MAJOR REASONS we went to war. Draw your own conclusions as to what this says about Fox, but it is highly doubtfull that BBC viewers would have less...what would their inaccurate beliefs be? Remember that the BBC was far and away the primary news source in the UK, and it was that same UK who saw support for the war shoot to 70% after their troops were on the ground in Iraq...and the war and it's causes were being reported by the BBC.

So, honestly, what innacurate beliefs do you believe the BBC viewers would hold that would supercede the rather major beliefs held to be true based on misconcpetion as found with Fox viewers?

 

How about "President Bush lied about the intelligence related to Iraq's WMD programs". I'll bet you'd get about an 80%+ positive rate on that one. You'd be a positive on that, wouldn't you?

Or maybe a "The current Iraq situation has turned into a Vietnam-style quagmire"? That one would score big with BBC and NPR audiences.

I know you'd get a high rate on a "The Jessica Lynch rescue was staged propaganda" question. Don't you think?

 

Again, those, unlike the questions the original poll asked, would be matters of opinion, not matters of fact, and I am giving Bush the benefit of the doubt on the first one to so charecterize it.

 

Mr. Clutch, then Freak, then tree and none of them yet has produced anything nearing a good analogy.

Sorry treeman, none of those questions have verifiable yes or no answers either. My answers to your questions, for the record, would be: I think he lied, but I certainly can't say it's a fact; Iraq looks bad, but the similarity to Nam is less in scope and more in the lack of a plan or exit strategy; and how could I possibly know. What are your answers, treeman, by the way, to the questions in the survey?

Have we already found WMD's? Yes or no?

Has a link to 9/11 and Al Qaeda been proven? Yes or no?

Was world opinion in support of the Iraq war? Yes or no?

I honestly don't know how you'll answer.

 

The first two are pretty much opinion (the second more than the first, since many people for some odd reason believe that proof of the president's dishonesty has already been presented), but the third one would be a "factual" question, as the BBC has reported that it was a staged incident. To its audience it would be a "fact", because they have reported it as such.

Do you think that the BBC's audience would score the third one as a "fact" significantly more frequently than the general population? I would think so.

 

It's possible that the BBC audience, having heard it was a fact (which I suspect you're exaggerating, but whatever, I didn't hear the report), would say it was a fact. But can you say for certain it wasn't? Because I don't think you can. Not a hundred percent. On the other hand, we have records of world opinion leading up to the war and we have the admission of the White House that WMD's and links to 9/11 and Al Qaeda have not been found. People who think the Lynch rescue was staged (and I think your wording is suspect too - I don't think that's the accusation) might be paranoid, they might be cynical, etc. But they also might be right. Same goes for the Vince Foster suicide actually. But when it comes to the questions in the survey, those people were WRONG. Dead wrong. And they were wrong not about peripheral subplots like Jessica Lynch but about THE primary cases for war. Bad, even dumb, analogies.

 

My answers?

Have we already found WMD's? No. We have found programs, but no weapons yet.

Has a link to 9/11 and Al Qaeda been proven? No. Have links to terrorists in general and Al Qaeda been found? Yes. But no, no proof of a 9/11 connection yet.

Was world opinion in support of the Iraq war? No. I am not blind. While we did have some support, one would have to be a fool (or blind) to say anything but that the significant majority of the world's inhabitants were rooting against us.

I am not an idiot, Batman. Those who answered positive to these questions must have been idiots. Either that they are hearing voices that cannot really be attributed to FOX news, because I myself watch it at times. I also watch MSNBC and even on occasion CNN, and none of these three networks have they ever claimed that we have found WMD yet, a 9/11-Iraq link was proven, or that the world was behind us.

I honestly cannot say where these people are getting their "information" from, but I know that they are not getting this particular "info" from FOX. It sounds more like stuff one would get from hack writers on the net.

 

I am not exaggerating. It was well publicized, there was even a huge thread here about it. The BBC claimed that it was all staged, the SF teams knew that no Iraqis were around, and that they went in with blanks loaded.

And yes, I can say with absolute certainty that it was definitely not a factual report. For starters, witnesses claimed that there most certainly Iraqis around, and I can 100% guarantee you that no Special Operator would *ever* foray into hostile territory with blanks loaded. It was a completely bogus report that was reported as fact by the BBC. Yes, I am certain of that.

 

Tree...read the study again. This was a study of people, and only of people, who use only one source for their news...so it's directly attributable. And it was shown that the numbers who believed it went up among Fox viewers the more they watched it. Single source....therefore, direct correlation: Sorry, I know you don't want to hear this, but it's factual.

Secondly, the majority of the globe was not " rooting against us." Nice attempt to make it a " They're all out to get us..." It was that most of the world felt that the war wasn't justified...that the reasons, WND threat, 9-11 connection, weren't sufficiently proven...Not that they just don't like us...they're the same world that ante'd up, and still are, in Afghanistan.

 

I remember reading the report, and I could be wrong, but I thought it was more in the form of raising doubts about the mission, asking questions, speculating, than presenting that scenario as factual. Again, I could be wrong...could some industrious soul find it for us?

 

Macbeth:

No one gets all of their news from a single source. Many people will watch only a single network news source like CNN or FOX, but no one gets the totality of their information from just a single network news channel. There are newspapers, there is the internet, there is hearsay from coworkers, there are any number of sources where people get their information. It is not directly attributable; at best they can cite a correlation, not a causal effect here.

And as I said, I watch FOX sometimes myself, and guess what? They say pretty much exactly the same things as do MSNBC and CNN. They do not report news differently, and they do not even really report different news (although they are about the only ones who ever report anything positive out of Iraq). But they are not reporting that WMD have been found, a 9/11 link has been discovered, or that world opinion backed us. They are simply not reporting those things.

Turn it on and watch it yourself if you don't believe me.

 

treeman, what's your theory as to how so many people are so wrong about such major issues? Also, how do you think this reflects on support for the war? Do you think these people's opinions might change a little once they were corrected on these (by any standards) large issues?

I'd like to remind you here that these were the exact issues on which I and many others (including MacBeth) based our opposition to the war. I've said repeatedly that if I'd believed what these mistaken people believe I would have supported the war. I think it's a fair guess that some of them might rescind their support when they found they were wrong.

But please don't get distracted from my first question. Why do you think they're wrong about such basic issues?

 

Tree...Again, read the study. Have you ever participated in a study? The 1st step is narrowing down your focus group...in this case, that focus group was single source news readers/listeners, etc. Newspapers WERE part of the study...as a single source, so if you watch FOX and read a paper, you weren't part of the study subject. Yeah, there are water cooler conversations, but A) If these people religiously rely on only one source for their news, how likely are they to be swayed otherwise by office gossip? B) That in no way addresses the fact that, within the FOX only group, the likelyhood of believing innacuracies increases the more they watch FOX. ie casual/occassional viewers are less likely to believe those things to be true which aren't than are those who watch it more often. That's pretty conclusive, and pretty damning..


and finally, C) There was another such poll ( as opposed to a study) done a few days agao, and on that one FOX viewers also came out far ahead in terms of believing things like we had found WMDs, Saddam has been proven to be behind 9-11, etc.

This is pretty open and shut tree. Honestly, I don't see how you can argue it.

 

I honestly don't know. I really don't. People get alot of crazy ideas, but this many with such ideas? I don't know where they're getting it from. Something significant is going on here, I think. What it is, I really can't say, I just know that they're not getting it from FOX news. You only need to watch it a little bit to see that.

Do I think that if they had the correct information that support would drop? Maybe fractionally, but probably not noticeably. Most people who support what was done support it because it was the right thing to do. We have removed a terrible dictator from power and freed 25 million people, we have conclusively ended a continuing threat to the region and the world's economy, and we have put to rest any threat that that dictator did or may have in the future posed directly to our country.

To those of us who support what we did, the fact that we have not yet found WMD is not too important, as we all know that they are/were probably there, and if they weren't then they would have been at some point in the future, presenting exactly the same threat. We know now that there is no possibility that they will ever be used against us, so the uncertainty regarding them is no longer relevant.

The fact that no 9/11 link has been found is not terribly important either, for reasons the Prez explained. We know that the ties with terrorists existed, and it was just too much of a risk to take that those links would not materialize into another 9/11. Now we don't have to worry about that anymore either.

Whether or not you care what the rest of the world thinks depends on how you see the world and America's place in it. It also depends on whether you put a higher premium on American security or "world peace". Those of us who support the war generally care more about our own security, and other nations' opinions come a distant second behind those concerns.

If these kooks had accurate knowledge, would it decrease support? Probably not noticeably, because they are probably ideologically predisposed towards supporting such action in the first place. Just my opinion.

 

MacBeth:

Look, you are trying to argue that based upon the results of this studty, FOX News must be reporting inaccuracies, and there is a simple way to test that theory: turn on FOX news and watch it, and compare it to news you are seeing on other outlets. You will not find a difference.

I am not saying that there is nothing to this; I am saying that something is going on here, but I don't know exactly what it is. All I can say is that FOX reports exactly the same news that other outlets do, and I do not have any idea where these people are getting these ideas from.

And again, there is no such thing as a single-source news reader/listener. No one gets all of their information from only a single source. It just doesn't happen unless you're a total shut in, and I don't think they only interviewed shut-ins. The best they could get from this is classing people into single-media classes, ie "This class watches only FOX news", or "this class reads only the Boston Globe", or "this class listens only to NPR". I don't think they would have been able to get too many "This class watches only FOX news and reads no newspapers, does not use the internet, and never listens to the radio" picks. Not too great a sample for that one.

And BTW, my undergrad is a BS in Psychology, so yes, I do know how these studies work. You would never be able to run one the way that you're saying they did. You'd spend a decade just trying to sort out your samples and getting them big enough to give valid responses.

But I go back to the beginning: just turn on FOX news and watch it for a little while, and compare their reporting to that of other outlets. (Don't worry, it won't turn you into a Republican unless you watch too much of it!) It is pretty much the same as the others, it just has a slightly different style. It is factually speaking, pretty much identical to the others.

If you are going to buy your own conclusion, then why don't you test it first?

 

I would just like you to guess. Any guess. Any half plausible guess.

I have one. They (and by extension Fox) got it from Bush. We were told repeatedly that there were definitely still WMD's and that when we got there we would find them -- no surprise that a lot of people think that after all this time (and the various, now revoked, smoking gun stories - from the White House, then from media) we must have found some. They probably remember several reports that we had found some. No great surprise to me that they don't remember all the retractions.

In the lead up to the war, Bush said 9/11 about half as many times as he said Saddam. We were also told we would eventually see a direct link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. No great surprise to me that some people think we've already seen it. In fact, Bush and Powell were both pretty much forced to clarify that recently so it wouldn't bite them later. Doesn't matter. The damage is done on that. And that was a major reason many people supported the war. It just was.

And, having seen the number of Americans who required UN support early in the process, the White House made a concerted effort to receive token support from various small countries -- exaggerating that support and downplaying dissent (kinda like in the WMD intel) -- and made a great to do about saying "coalition" whenever they could, repeatedly referring to "coalition forces," in that famous coalition of basically two countries. No surprise to me that a lot of people thought there was broad international support. They were basically told there was.

Now, I know you don't agree that the White House (or Fox) misled the American people on these issues, so what's your theory? They were misled. We know that now. They are wrong on basic and major issues and they think they are right. Why do you think that is? Just guess.

 

OK, so they were misled by Bush? They think these things because Bush told them these things?

Then why aren't CNN and MSNBC viewers thinking the same things? Because they were told exactly the same things by Bush, just on different TV stations?

Does not compute. Think of a better explanation.

I really don't know why they think these things. Maybe they thought they heard it on TV. Maybe their little angel friends told them these things. Maybe aliens told them. I know that Bush hasn't said that we've found WMD yet, and I know that FOX hasn't reported that we have, so who can say?

Maybe they're just idiots.

 

Well, the obvious conclusion there is that most idiots watch Fox News. I mean, sorry but...

When the WMD debate was going on, we kept hearing, well, we know they had them, so what happened to them? If anyone doubted that the WMD's were still there, they were called upon to provide an explanation as to where they went. And I never once suggested aliens took them.

So, we know these people believe these things. So, I ask you, why do they believe them? If it was one or two of these guys, I'd buy the 'they imagined it' or their sister told them theory. But there's lots of these guys (anyone know the sample?). And a clear majority of people who identified themselves as watching only (or primarily - I'm not getting into that debate because it's irrelevant - THEY identified themselves as Fox watchers - primarily at least) Fox are dead wrong on major, easily understood issues. Not some of them. Not a couple crazies. The vast majority of them. So what happened? I have my theory, which I've explained. I'd like to hear yours. Without the alien stuff. I'm almost sure you were kidding about that.