Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study

[Fuzz]

Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.

Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-less-informed-people-fairleigh-dickinson_n_1106305.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#s490348&title=Your_World_with

[NYC_SKP]

1. This makes perfectly good sense. (nt)

[jtrockville]

2. They needed a poll to draw this conclusion?

:shrug:

[Bigmack]

3. Good story... but I use the actual study when posting...

HuffPo is dismissed by many as "liberal media".

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/

[JohnnyRingo]

4. This reminds me of a Clay Bennett cartoon

But then, a lot of things remind me of his art:

[Monarda]

5. The less people know, the less they want to know

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121142446.htm

Excerpt: ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) — "The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware, according to a paper published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology."

The authors of the study theorize that people chose to remain ignorance because they want to continue to trust those to whom they have delegated important decisions -- the "government" (in the words of the studies' authors), or, in the case of the ignorant viewers of Fox News, the Republican party and its hack spokespeople on Fox News.

[Aerows]

6. If they had any sense

They wouldn't be watching Fox News in the first place. The problem isn't only that Fox News offers bad information - which they certainly do - it's that the people who watch it want to believe it, no matter how ridiculous it is.