NPR listeners rule!
May 24, 2012 1 Comment
Or, Fox News makes you dumb. One can make either conclusion from this latest FDU survey:
The survey of 1185 random people conducted by landline and cell phone in early February follows a similar poll FDU conducted last November, which surveyed only New Jersey residents and returned similar results.
Each respondent was asked four of eight questions, which are at the bottom of this post. “On average, people were able to answer correctly 1.8 of 4 questions about international news, and 1.6 of 5 questions about domestic affairs,” the report says. Here’s the breakdown by viewing habits.
The report explains:
The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly — a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. [emphasis mine] On the \other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching only The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could answer about 1.42 questions correctly.
They also controlled for partisanship in viewing habits, as you can see in this handy chart:
Maybe the problem with conservatives watching MSNBC is that they are hopelessly confused. I’m not much of a fan of Fox or MSNBC, but I do think it quite notable that liberals watching MSNBC do much better than conservatives watching Fox.
But, despite the title of the post, I really do think that the big takeaway is that people who watch only Fox News do worse than people who watch no news at all.
About Steve Greene
Even though there may be a statistically significant difference between some of these, I really have to wonder what the substantive differences mean. I mean, the biggest difference between Fox and NPR is 1 of 5 correct compared to 2/5 correct (international issues). And domestic issues? 1 correct compared to 1.5 correct. I feel like the bigger substantive difference is the level of misinformation between Fox News viewers and others.