Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Public Mind Poll just published a study that proves that viewers of Fox News are not only less informed than those who watch, say, MSNBC, but that viewers of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News are actually less informed than people who watch no news at all.
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“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll. “Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.”
By contrast, some media sources have a positive effect on political knowledge. For example, people who report reading a national newspaper like The New York Times or USA Today are 12-points more likely to know that Egyptians have overthrown their government than those who have not looked at any news source. And those who listen to the non-profit NPR radio network are 11-points more likely to know the outcome of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. However, the best informed respondents are those that watched Sunday morning news programs: leading to a 16- point increase in the likelihood of knowing what happened in Egypt and an 8-point increase in the likelihood of knowing what happened in Syria.
“Sunday morning news shows tend to spend a lot more time on a single issue than other news broadcasts, and they are less likely to degenerate into people shouting at each other,” said Cassino. “Viewers pick up more information from this sort of calm discussion than from other formats. Unfortunately, these shows have a much smaller audience than the shouters.”
David Taintor at Talking Points Memo, who provided the below copy of the study, notes,
The results probably won’t come as much of a shock. In December, TPM reported that a University of Maryland study showed that daily Fox News viewers were the most misinformed, regardless of political party.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind Poll
http://www.scribd.com/embeds/73377350/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-19cd0t9lbiy3hphr3xts
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