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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Politifact needs to be fact checked

Politifact says that jon stewart was wrong when he said that faux news viewers were consistently misinformed and faux news' glenn beck jumped on it and posted it on his page as proof that liberals lie and faux viewers are actually geniuses.. unfortunately for politifact, the study organizers wrote to them and said:
Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, wrote us after the story appeared to say that testing for lack of knowledge is not enough. "We analyzed the effect of increased exposure to news outlets. We found that with all other outlets, increased exposure generally resulted in less misinformation. However, for Fox viewers, on nine points of information, increased exposure correlated with increased misinformation. This was true of only one point of information for public broadcasting and MSNBC viewers, and two points of information for network news. This effect was found in the 2003 study as well. Fox viewers were the only group for whom increased exposure resulted in greater misinformation."
which blew politifact's analyses out of the water.
i wrote to politifact and made a few points myself that cannot be denied.  i put in links so that you can check for my veracity yourselves, if you are interested in seeing how much dumber faux viewers are than the rest of us.
here is my (edited) letter:
"first off, i don't know why you mentioned o'reilly and hannity.  Jon said Fox viewers, not viewers of individual shows.  so that whole analysis is for nothing.
Secondly, every one of those polls and studies show Fox viewers as being the most misinformed.  I don't know how you can read them any other way.  For every question asked they were CONSISTENTLY wrong.  The answer, whether you like it or not, is yes or no.  They got the answers wrong.  My question is, did you write up this assessment or did Fox news make up a fake page to, again, misinform it's viewers?
in both studies you posted from University of Maryland, One of the Maryland studies actually said, and politifact ignored:
"There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue.   Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that:
 most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)  most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)  the economy is getting worse (26 points)  most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)  the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)  their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)  the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)  when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)   and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)"
how did you just ignore this in your assessment?
and according to this pew poll:
http://tinyurl.com/3wvb5rk
how can you say that fox is within the national average.  did you even look at the polls or studies?
it says that 35% of fox viewers are misinformed.  that's not the "average" as you say.  That's next to the bottom of the list.  only "on line news" comes in lower.
in the 2008 survey you reference,
http://people-press.org/2008/08/17/news-interest-and-knowledge/
in their "education, age and knowledge" section, Fox is again at the rock bottom of the list.  they say the national average on that string of data is "18".  how can it be 18 when it starts as a low of 18 and only moves up from there?  fox is at the bottom of that list.
I tune to you to get the truth but this time you really blew it.  You need to reevaluate this analysis.
You are so far off on this it's hard to take you seriously anymore.  If you have ever watched fox you will hear them giving misinformation as you watch.  There is no doubt that they lie to their viewers in order to pass on an Obama/liberal hating agenda that is based on lies.  I'm very disappointed in you.

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