No doubt readers of this site have already seen this story (it has been
extremely popular with a large fraction of my Facebook friends):
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fox-news-poll-20111121,0,3985116.story?obref=obinsite(see
text of story below).
While the story does fit with my own political biases, since much of my job
consists in teaching young people to look for the ways the popular media
distorts and mangles social science, I do feel constrained to point out
what may be obvious. While the Fairley Dickinson political science
professor is quoted as making a causal link between watching Fox News and
being poorly informed
("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"), this is not really the case. As described, this was not an
experimental study (which it would be if it had somehow randomly assigned
equal numbers of people to watch each news source, including a no news
condition, and then administered the current events test). At best this is
a correlational study, which means a number of other possible explanations
for the result can not be ruled out. For example, the story does not tell
us if the study asked about educational level - it is certainly possible
that Fox News viewers have less formal education than, say, NPR listeners
or Daily Show viewers, and it is plausible that it would be this
educational difference that would explain the difference in current event
knowledge. Certainly somewhere the various educational levels of news show
audiences must be available; I am pretty sure I have read that Fox News
tends to have an older audience than the Daily Show; if so then almost
certainly the FN audience has fewer years of formal education (almost
always true for older age cohorts).
I actually do suspect that an exclusive diet of Fox News would impair
accurate understanding of current events, but a study like this does not
really do much to test that hypothesis. This is particularly irksome
because it does not seem that hard to do something like an experimental
study for 2 weeks, or, at the very least, ask about a number of obvious
alternative explanations and try to control for them statistically. I am
not sure why they didn't do that (oh wait, I am - then they would be
psychologists and not political scientists). I am aware that it is quite
possible that the actual study either did try to control for other
variables, or at least puts the quote from the polysci prof in a better and
more accurate context, and the news reports are just butchering it - that
happens even more often than shoddy political science research.
***********************
"A new survey of New Jersey voters comes to a provocative conclusion: Fox
News<http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/media-industry/television-industry/fox-news-channel-%28tv-network%29-ORCRP000017476.topic>viewers
tend to be less informed about current events than those who don't
watch any news at all. Fairleigh Dickinson University recently questioned
612 adults in New Jersey about how they get their news, offering as options
traditional outlets like newspapers and local and national television news,
or blogs, websites and even Comedy
Central<http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/media-industry/television-industry/comedy-central-%28tv-network%29-ORCRP000011741.topic>'s
"The Daily Show." They then asked a series of factual questions about the
major events of the last year, from the "Arab Spring" to the Republican
race for president. For example, respondents were first asked whether, to
the best of their knowledge, opposition groups in Egypt had been successful
in bringing down the Mubarak regime.
Among
NPR<http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/media-industry/radio-industry/npr-ORNPR0000040.topic>listeners,
68% correctly said they had been; only 49% of Fox News viewers
answered correctly. In fact, the survey found,
Fox<http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/media-industry/television-industry/fox-%28tv-network%29-ORCRP000008831.topic>viewers
were 18 percentage points less likely to answer correctly than
those who watched no news at all. "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," said Dan Cassino, a
political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson. Those who watched
Sunday public affairs shows tended to be the best informed on current
events, the survey found. Readers of national newspapers also were more
likely to respond correctly. And it seems Jon
Stewart<http://www.latimes.com/topic/entertainment/television/jon-stewart-PECLB004184.topic>may
be more reliable than cable news anchors. On Occupy
Wall
Street<http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/activism/protest/occupy-wall-street-EVGAP00019.topic>,
the survey found viewers of "The Daily
Show"<http://www.latimes.com/topic/entertainment/television/the-daily-show-%28tv-program%29-ENTTV000000244.topic>were
12 percentage points more likely to say protesters were predominantly
Democratic.
MSNBC<http://www.latimes.com/topic/economy-business-finance/media-industry/msnbc-%28tv-network%29-ORCRP0000017172.topic>viewers
were the most likely to say the protesters were mainly
Republicans<http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/parties-movements/republican-party-ORGOV0000004.topic>.
"Jon Stewart has not spent a lot of time on some of these issues. But the
results show that when he does talk about something, his viewers pick up a
lot more information than they would from other sources," Cassino said.
The overall survey, conducted from Oct. 17 to 23, had a margin of error of
3.5 percentage points. Because of the smaller sample size among those who
selected a specific news source, the margin of error would be much higher."
--
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