As of November 22, 2011, Think Progress had found seven studies showing Fox News’s viewers to be the worst informed of all news consumers. In a post about a report that had just come out in the International Journal of Press/Politics, by communication scholar Lauren Feldman of American University and colleagues which found that “Fox News viewing manifests a significant, negative association with global warming acceptance,” Chris Mooney cited six previous studies with similar findings.
I identified 6 separate studies showing Fox News viewers to be the most misinformed, and in a right wing direction—studies on global warming, health care, health care a second time, the Ground Zero mosque, the Iraq war, and the 2010 election.
I also asked if anyone was aware of any counterevidence, and none was forthcoming. There might very well be a survey out there showing that Fox viewers aren’t [emphasis in original] the most misinformed cable news consumers on some topic (presumably it would be a topic where Democrats have some sort of ideological blind spot), but I haven’t seen it. And I have looked.
Now there is another study about this. Researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind Poll conducted a very interesting survey. They asked the viewers of certain news sources (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, Sunday Show, talk radio, Daily Show, and NPR) a short series of questions, divided into domestic and international issues. They also had a control group who did not watch (or listen to) any news source. The results (as an average score) is shown in the two charts above.
And the results don't look good for Fox News. Viewers who got most of their news from Fox did much worse than any other group -- scoring 1.04 on the domestic test and 1.08 on the international test. That is significantly lower than the group that watched no news shows. The "no news" group scored 1.22 on the domestic test and 1.28 on the international test. All of the people who watched (or listened to) the other news sources scored higher than the "no news" group (except for MSNBC, which scored slightly lower on the international test -- but still significantly higher than the Fox News group).
Of course, this brings up a sort of "chicken or egg" question. Do the dumbest people in America watch Fox News, or does Fox News make the people that watch them dumber? I suspect it may be a combination of both. Anyone who thinks they will get real news from watching Fox can't be too bright, and Fox is much more interested in spreading right-wing propaganda than reporting real news.
The news source whose listeners scored the highest on both tests was no surprise. It was NPR (National Public Radio), perhaps the most accurate and highly regarded news source in the nation. MSNBC, CNN, and talk radio should all be ashamed of themselves (even though they did finish much better than Fox News). All of them were beaten by the viewers of The Daily Show (a comedy show) on both tests.
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