Are You Getting The Truth From Cable News Channels ?

Earlier this year, a PublicMind Survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University found some disturbing facts about the cable news channels. They asked those who got all their news from one of the three cable news channels (Fox, CNN, MSNBC) some domestic and international news questions -- and then compared the results to those who watched no news programs at all (and to those who got their news from NPR or The Daily Show). The results were not good.

MSNBC viewers scored equally with those who watched no news show regularly, while CNN did a bit better than the no news people. But both paled in comparison to those who got all their news from a comedy show (The Daily Show) -- the the people who scored the highest were those who got their news from NPR (the public channel).

But all of them did much better than Fox News did. Fox viewers did worse than those who watched no news at all -- both on domestic and international questions. That's pretty bad, and tells us that Fox viewers may actually be getting misinformation rather than news from their favorite channel. And a new survey, done by PunditFact (a division of politifact.com), shows that is exactly what is happening. After viewing "hundreds of hours of videos" they came up with the numbers in the chart below.

Basically, they found that none of the cable news networks can be fully trusted to tell the truth all of the time. CNN did the best at 60% of the time, and MSNBC came in at a pathetic 31% of the time -- but even MSNBC's numbers were a lot better than those of Fox News. Fox told all or most of the truth only 18% of the time, and were found to be telling ridiculous falsehoods (lying) a whopping 60% of the time. It just shows that Fox viewers do poorly on current events tests because they just don't get the truth from their favorite news channel. Instead, they get what they want to hear (coupled with what corporate America wants them to hear).

The tendency at this point might be to vilify Fox News for their outrageous failure to tell the truth, and give CNN a pat on the back for telling the truth a significant percentage of the time. In my opinion though, none of the three cable networks are doing as well as they should be doing. Shouldn't all of them be reporting the truth 100% of the time? Of course they should.

So why aren't they doing it? The obvious answer is that they are all owned by giant corporations, and they can only report what those corporations want reported. CNN was able to sneak some truth through about 60% of the time, and that's pretty remarkable -- but it's not good enough. And Fox News doesn't even try -- they give you the truth about 18% of the time (and you can bet that small bit of truth is the truth that their corporate masters don't mind seeing reported).

Why does NPR (PBS) do so much better? because they are a public network rather than a corporate owned network. If they shade the truth, they will have to answer to either the left or the right (and maybe even those in the middle), and they have no reason to report only what the corporations want reported.

We don't get much real news these days (and even less truth). We get what the giant corporations want us to hear or see -- and that's because almost all of the mainstream media in this country is owned by about six giant corporations (who don't want you to know about or think about anything that might tend to reduce their outrageous profits). I wish it wasn't true, but that's just the sad state of the media in the United States at this time.