Monday, December 20, 2010

FOX News makes you less informed, study finds

Does watching FOX News make you dumber? A new study shows that prolonged exposure to the conservatively biased news network causes you to have a skewed view of the world, more often than not being misinformed on issues of the day rather than having an actual understanding of them.

On a plethora of issues, FOX News misled its viewers more than any other media outlet. More believed that most scientists disagreed with the science behind climate change (untrue); more mistakenly believed that taxes on income were raised by the Obama administration (except for smokers, they actually went down); and more questioned whether the president himself was even born in the U.S. (he was).

FOX viewers were even more likely to believe, by significant margins, that certain historical events happened under Obama's tenure, when in fact they occurred while George W. Bush was president -- things like TARP and parts of the auto bailout.

These are troubling observations, especially when you consider the severity of the "information" being dispensed. One has to wonder whether FOX is simply a terrible news outlet or if they're blatantly hoping to misinform the public in a deliberate attempt to change things politically in this country. As time goes on, one has to assume the latter is the case, especially given how wrong the anchors and the pundits are on "more-than-daily" occurrences.

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