Misleading America
Published on Monday, October 20, 2003 by the United Press International
Misleading America
Commentary by Shaun Waterman
WASHINGTON -- It's official -- watching Fox News makes you ignorant.
To be precise, researchers from the Program on International Policy at the
University of Maryland found that those who relied on Fox for their news were
more likely than those who relied on any other news source to have what the
study called "significant misperceptions" about the war in Iraq.
Pollsters asked more than 9,000 Americans about three commonly held canards:
that the United States had hard evidence Saddam Hussein had been working
closely with al-Qaida; that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq; and
that world public opinion was in favor of the U.S.-led war.
Overall, a scary 60 percent believed at least one of these fallacies. Eight
percent believed all three.
The most commonly held was -- unsurprisingly -- the Iraq/al-Qaida link. Fully
48 percent of respondents believed this. The totals for the other two were in
the 20 percent to 25 percent range.
But among those who get their news from Fox, 80 percent had at least one
"misperception" and 45 percent -- nearly six times the overall average -- had all
three.
Let the bashing begin!!!
[Edited on 18-1-2004 by TheCatalyst]