Extended exposure to Fox News makes voters stupid, university study finds

Extended exposure to Fox News makes voters stupid, university study finds

www.rawstory.com

The troublesome record of spin by conservative television station Fox News has long been a cause for concern to many Americans, who frequently allege that the nation's most viewed "news" network has the effect of dumbing down voters.

Turns out, they were right.

A University of Maryland study (PDF) published earlier this month found that people in the survey who had the most exposure to Fox News were more likely to believe falsehoods and rumors about national and world affairs when compared

(visit the link for the full news article)

What, just FOX News? This article is clearly biased, though if you can get past the obvious biases and understand the meat of the issue, the study does have some value. However, I don't think that FOX News is alone in "dumbing down" the American people, as CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the tabloid stations, Newspapers and so-called "media outlets" do the same thing as FOX News, just maybe not to the same degree or with as much "zest".

Anyway, the take home lesson here, is that the MSM is dumbing down the population, or at the very least, misleading the masses. Unfortunately, many readers of this article who are still under the illusion of the false left-right paradigm of American politics, will go on believing that their favorite tabloid, AKA MSM outlet, is actually doing a fine job at carrying on the responsibility of a "free press".

Make no mistake about it, just as FOX News viewers are likely to believe in falseified information, so are the viewers of the other tabloid stations and while FOX is singled out here, the problem is certainly not limited to them.



--airspoon

www.rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Gee, television introjecting political attitudes into people makes them stupid? Or do people have to be stupid in the first place to watch Fox News?

Oh cmon Airspoon, the only one on FOX News that has any sense is O'Riley. The rest of them are partisan shills pushing a fascist neocon agenda.

reply to post by airspoon


The issue, as always with popular studies, is that they are taking correlation (stupidity is positively correlated with attention to fox news) to mean cause (fox news makes people stupid).

It could equally be that stupid people are more likely to watch fox news. Or that people with pre-occupied conservative parents were conditioned to shut up and watch fox news from an early age, and therefore their upbringing is responsible for both stupidity (from parents not interacting with child sufficiently) and fox-news-watchage (because by the time they were old enough to be stupid, it was a lifetime habit).

Personally, I think it's just that people who are stupid are more likely to limit their intake of current affairs to a single source, and adopt the impartial imparting of that news as their own.

Unless they did a study where they used fox-news-watchage as an independent variable, and sat one identical twin in front of it 24/7, and sat the other in front of a television 24/7 but gave him/her a remote control, and then stupidity (dependant variable) was consistently higher in the fox-news-forced-intake twin.

It's flagrantly biased as a study, but, then again, I find that Fox tends to put out more stretches of the truth than the others. They're all pretty bad, but I've found in my own personal experience that Fox is above and beyond the clear worst.

So our universities actually receive funding to conduct research on crap like this?? I'd love to see the same study on the effects of MSNBC and The Today show on voters and the effects of MTV on college students. Duh? Wanna buy a monkey??

reply to post by whatukno


You're joking about O'Riley, right? Anyway, I believe that the only one with any sense is the "Judge", Andrew Napolitano, though I believe he was only brought on-board, at least full time, after much of the Republican party defected to either the Libertarian party (upper case "L"), or the Tea Party, which by the way, the latter was quickly re-captured.

However and with that being said, I surely wouldn't argue with the premise of your statement, though the same could be said for the other media outlets too. Lets not forget that the neo-con agenda is a liberal agenda, at least in the sense of government size, spending and liberty. You are sadly mistaken if you believe that it is only the Republican neo-cons who push a fascist agenda. In fact, I wouldn't even call it fascism, so much as "social-fascism". Regardless of whether you are a Republican neo-con or Democrat neo-con (better known as plain old liberals), your ultimate goal is benefit the corporatist agenda. All of these so-called "socialist" policies aren't really socialist at all, so much as they are fascist, seeing how it is always the corporate interests who benefit from such policies.

Regardless, my main argument still stands and that it that all corporate MS media is dumbing down and misleading the public, not just FOX News. All of these pundits are schills to an agenda that burdens the American people, while benefits the status quo or the elite. If you stop to think about the very purpose of punditry, it becomes painfully obvious. The whole purpose of a pundit, is for his/her viewers to delegate their critical self thinking skills to the pundit. The whole job of a pundit, is to do the thinking for their viewers.





--airspoon

Originally posted by whatukno
Oh cmon Airspoon, the only one on FOX News that has any sense is O'Riley. The rest of them are partisan shills pushing a fascist neocon agenda.

Bill O'Riley has sense? My sarcasm detector is malfunctioning here, help me out...

I gotta laugh when I read this from the study

91 percent believed the stimulus legislation lost jobs;

72 percent believed the health reform law will increase the deficit;

72 percent believed the economy is getting worse;

60 percent believed climate change is not occurring;

49 percent believed income taxes have gone up;

63 percent believed the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts;

What expert is actually saying that this info. is completely true to begin with. Just look at the comment about health care reform. We have no idea how much this monstrosity will end up costing. Even the CBO cast doubt on the long term cost of this mess. NO ONE KNOWS YET.

The economy only appears to be improving on Wall Street. Unemployment keeps rising and the housing market keeps dropping while consumer costs keep increasing!!!!!

Climate change needs some clarification!! It is wrongly being lumped together with Gore's Global Warming BS. Yes the climate is changing on schedule.

Stimulus tax cuts.... Not really. I like to call them tax rebates for those first time homebuyers, or those spending money on Approved Green Home Improvements. Cash for Clunkers... etc etc. Its called propping up the markets.

What crap!! Kudos to U of Maryland for revealing a clear bias. This is what I expect from our nations Universities nowadays.

reply to post by airspoon

Gee, there's a surprise. Fox news leads the propaganda wolf pack, huh? And with CNN right on their heels, you can bet on it.

You are correct of course. They're all the same. But Fox should be quite proud to now be the standard by which others are judged.

reply to post by airspoon


THANKS for this! Just love it when studies prove stuff.

True of course - as with all media that feed people lies. ...People NEED to turn their brains off, or they'd turn schizoid with all the contradictions. ...Great choice, huh? Acquired stupidity or mental health issues.

....Avoidance is a great third option though.

I honestly think it is the T.V. itself. Add a little fear and division and you have a recipe for a Zanax patient.

well if something can make you stupid then it follows something can make you intelligent.


i get stupid when i read some of these threads.

well, isn't stupid a dna problem? like intelligence?

ignorant and informed are better words to use.

i watch fox all the time and i ain't stupid 1 bit! you betcha!

i'm a frikin wile e. coyote, super genius.

stupid university.

reply to post by jibeho


If you don't agree with liberals you're stupid apparently, even if what you believe is factually true.

Extended exposure to any television programming produces this effect, its like electronic fluoride.

Stay away from TV. Reuters and the AP on the web are better than any news on television.

reply to post by fooks


It has been suggested that there is a genetic basis, but adoption studies of children (Hodges and Tizzard, I think, was one of the major ones) has shown that at least a part of intelligence is about upbringing - children who are kept quiet and ignored tend to lose interest and become glassy-eyed dimwits/sheeple/zombies/presidents, children who receive interaction and/or environmental stimulation tend to grow up to be more intelligent.

An extra reason for shying away from genetic determination of intelligence is that that argument was used to justify the eugenecist movement of the 1930s, which was basically nazism in the USA except with sterilising rather than killing people who were black, polish, or any other "undesireable" group that was previously deprived and didn't do brilliantly on the (extremely culturally biased) IQ tests.

So while there is probably some genetic element involved, people are often uncomfortable studying how much of one there is, and considering the vast environmental (not as in grow trees, but as in keep baby interested) impact, it's not hugely important, either.

Now obviously this is slanted, but i like how they say fox viewers will believe falsies like: then they list a few things that are true, totally going against what they had just said. It reminds me of a phrase "What came first, the stupid or the fox"

reply to post by eazyriderl_l


I think that just proves the point that it isn't only FOX News which is dumbing people down.

--airspoon

""""....who had the most exposure to Fox News were more likely to believe falsehoods and rumors about national and world affairs when compared """"

Newspapers in the US no longer have paying customers because nobody believes their propaganda anymore.

Humans now can find out exactly what the ruling elite are doing around the world and can easily download the facts to show......we've been getting fed propaganda...NOT real news based upon facts or truth.

The reason Barrack Hussein wants to create a civilian police force the size of our military is to control a population that found out the lies and propaganda....Why the world hates America and what we've done over the years.