GOOD JOURNALISM VS. BAD. Supporters of Fox News like to argue that, by virtue of being more balanced and playing it down the middle, the network gets it right where other news outlets, mired in liberal bias and opinioneering, get it wrong. But a new study out from the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland suggests (among other things) that Fox News viewers are literally less well-informed about some basic facts than viewers of other, putatively slanted news sources. The study does reflect badly on the media as a whole, of course. In the aggregate, the researchers found, an unfortunately large number of Americans have been misinformed about the degree of foreign support for the Iraq war; whether or not we've found WMDs in Iraq; and whether or not Saddam Hussein was involved with the 9-11 attacks. But in looking more closely at the results, the study reports:
The extent of Americans' misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.
How much worse is Fox than its competitors? According to a chart on page 13 of the study, 80 percent of the respondents who watched it had one or more misperceptions. This was slightly worse than CBS (71 percent), significantly worse than ABC and rival CNN (55 percent) and way worse than the print media (47 percent). NPR and PBS do especially well in the study. The researchers report:
Fox News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions -- and were three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three.
That's quite a rebuke to Fox's self-image as the most straight-shooting news source in America -- and to conservatives who believe NPR is hopelessly biased to the left. So when it comes to reporting on the war, folks, here's the box score. Ideologically driven, overtly partisan cable news network funded by a conservative media tycoon: 0. Neutral, nonprofit, nonpartisan radio and television networks funded in part by taxpayers: 1.
Please -- do touch that dial.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/