Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All

[SummerMadness]

Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All

Media outlets such as Fox News and MSNBC have a negative impact on people's current events knowledge while NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative sources of news, according to Fairleigh Dickinson University's newest PublicMind survey.

Researchers asked 1,185 random nationwide respondents what news sources they had consumed in the past week and then asked them questions about events in the U.S. and abroad.

 

[Glaucus]

Your bias left MSNBC out of that title. I'd say you're no different than either outlet in that you have an agenda.

 

[SummerMadness]

Your bias left MSNBC out of that title. I'd say you're no different than either outlet in that you have an agenda.

Fox News was the only 24-hour news channel one that fared worse than watching no news at all. What's inaccurate about that?

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Both Fox and MSNBC are only good for nothing.

 

[Thedictator]

Back when I was getting my Masters Degree, most of my courses were about how to conduct research. There are all kinds of ways to manipulate the research to give the kind of results you want.
One of the best ways is manipulate the way a question is asked.

So if you have a research survey about Abortion and you want to results to come out in favor of Abortion you might ask a question like "Do you think woman should die in back alley abortion clinics like they did before Roe v wade? So now you have research that says that 90% of the country support Abortion rights and Roe v Wade.

Also another way to manipulate the data is to throw out Questioners who did not answer the way you wanted them to.

I have know doubt that this was rigged research.

 

[USincognito]

Your bias left MSNBC out of that title. I'd say you're no different than either outlet in that you have an agenda.

Nice predictable whataboutism, but the problem is MSNBC viewers did not score lower than those who watched no news at all. That was only Fox viewers.

 

[USincognito]

@SummerMadness I'd just point out this survey was conducted in 2012 so it's not quite News or Current Events. Probably would fit in well in Politics though.

 

[SummerMadness]

@SummerMadness I'd just point out this survey was conducted in 2012 so it's not quite News or Current Events. Probably would fit in well in Politics though.

Oops, my bad. I was reading a news story and it was a prominent related link, didn't look at the date. Time for the kitchen sink.

 

[SummerMadness]

Since this story is old hat, here is another story, more recent, but still old.

A Rigorous Scientific Look Into The 'Fox News Effect'

In 2012, a Fairleigh Dickinson University survey reported that Fox News viewers were less informed about current events than people who didn't follow the news at all. The survey had asked current events questions like "Which party has the most seats in the House of Representatives?" and also asked what source of news people followed. The Fox viewers' current events scores were in the basement. This finding was immediately trumpeted by the liberal media—by Fox, not so much—and has since become known as the Fox News effect. It conjures the image of Fox News as a black hole that sucks facts out of viewers' heads.

NPR and Last Week Tonight are at the top of the informed list. The upside, Fox News viewers no longer lag behind people that do not watch the news, but they lag behind users/viewers in every other form of media.

 

[ubicaritas]

NPR is good stuff. I love listening to their news. It's like the American version of the BBC.

 

[TuxAme]

Back when I was getting my Masters Degree, most of my courses were about how to conduct research. There are all kinds of ways to manipulate the research to give the kind of results you want.
One of the best ways is manipulate the way a question is asked.

So if you have a research survey about Abortion and you want to results to come out in favor of Abortion you might ask a question like "Do you think woman should die in back alley abortion clinics like they did before Roe v wade? So now you have research that says that 90% of the country support Abortion rights and Roe v Wade.

Also another way to manipulate the data is to throw out Questioners who did not answer the way you wanted them to.

I have know doubt that this was rigged research.

I had to learn about this my freshman year in psychology, the same time we were taught about the old "9 out of 10 dentists recommend X" trope. You get to pick which 10 of the dentists you asked to represent when making that claim (and hope no one asks about it).

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All

Well, I'd accept the correlation as valid, but let us consider the possibility that the cause is the dismal ignorance of current events and the result is the choice to watch only Fox news.

 

[TuxAme]

The study showed that the effects of ideologically-pitched media, like Fox News, MSNBC and talk radio, depend on who is listening or watching. On the whole, MSNBC, for instance, had no impact on political knowledge one way or the other. However, liberals who watched MSNBC did better on the knowledge questions, answering correctly 1.89 of the domestic questions and 1.64 of the international questions correctly. Similarly, while moderates and liberals who watch Fox News do worse at answering the questions than others, conservatives who watch Fox do no worse than people who watch no news at all. Talk radio also had differential effects depending on the ideology of the listener, but they were much smaller. None of the other news media had effects that depended on ideology.

 

[TuxAme]

I tried adding the second graphic, but since CF doesn't seem to want to show it:

See the second graphic.

 

[SummerMadness]

I don't get the quibbling over comparisons of Fox News and MSNBC. Simply put, 24-hour news channels are the worst at informing people and you should seek out other news outlets.

 

[Humble me Lord]

The only news outlet worth the ink

 

[variant]

Ad hoc ergo propter hoc.

It is equally possible that the people are just generally uninformed who choose to watch fox news.

 

[FreeinChrist]

MOD HAT

This was moved from News & Current events to the Kitchen Sink.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

All so-called news is just entertainment and has little real value. All media sources manipulate the news and thus their listeners and viewers. This includes 'public media' which really pounds their bleeding heart liberal messages home.

I prefer Fox as they have the 'foxiest' personnel of any media network (including even my local Fox affiliate).

 

[SummerMadness]

MOD HAT

This was moved from News & Current events to the Kitchen Sink.

Thank you very much.