Pretty much what most people already knew. But with data!Follow

See? If you'd just learned how to make a cogent argument instead I wouldn't be in this position at all. It's all your fault, you inarticulate *******.

First look at the study, the survey, it's conclusions and the linked article leaves me skeptical at best.

The only survey question that mentions a particular news source is towards the end that asks about different news sources and if/how often they are utilized. There is no analysis done showing correlation between news source and knowledge of issues - at least that I saw. There is correlation (not degree of correlation, but at least the analysis was done) shown between knowledge of various issues and political affiliation.

17% of respondents don't get news regularly from any source. I'd be more interested on how well they were informed.

Many of the issues and their current outcomes are opinion based and not fact-based. The study doesn't even begin to measure intelligence versus stupidity - that doesn't seem to be it's purpose. The study was about how Americans viewed the information or misinformation they received.

I trust that the study has value and it's conclusions are basically sound. However, the conclusions from the study are not the same as the conclusions that the OP's article splooges out in it's 'stupid' headline. ....talk about misinformation.

P.S. - Joph your link to the pdf of the survey questions didn't work for me.







Edited, Dec 16th 2010 8:44pm by Elinda

This is not entirely true-- they can show correlation between news source and knowledge of issues with the data they have. However, I think what you meant to say, and the point I was making earlier, was that they do not show that FOX news caused individuals to be less knowledgeable. For all we know, these people would have been less informed if they hadn't watched FOX news. Of course, that notion is laughable to me, but that's a semi-scientifically defensible argument.

I think that it's sillier than that. Said correlation is not exclusive. Unless they focused on just respondents who listed watching Fox news, but put "never" down for every other news source (which might drop you to a sample size of one single outlier nutjob in the whole survey), any correlation you attempt to make is going to be meaningless. There's a reason why the better correlations are things like gender, race, how you voted, etc. Those are single exclusive values and you can derive useful information from them while retaining a reasonably useful sample size within the whole set.


Looking at the same list of "wrong answers" that the article made huge hay out of is interesting when we correlate Republican vs Democrat voters though. Why focus on Fox News and not the more obvious "Republican vs Democrat"? Perhaps because the data isn't nearly as useful for the point they wanted to make. The cart is way ahead of the horse on this one.

Edited, Dec 16th 2010 2:34pm by gbaji

Eh, I disagree with that fully. Even assuming that most of the people aren't partial to their primary news source almost to the exclusivity of others (HUGE assumption that I would bet against, and there's probably data to support that, perhaps even cited in the study), no statistically significant correlation is meaningless. It may not mean what you want it to mean, or what you think it means, but it's not meaningless.

Everyone I know who would list FOX as their primary news source really only watches FOX. Everyone else I know refuses to watch FOX except out of morbid curiosity. While television may not be the primary news source of Americans (I honestly don't know) I doubt their news is any less polarized in the websites they visit or the paper they subscribe to. Particularly for conservatives, radio and television are more popular political news sources.

Ultimately it's perfectly defensible to reduce a complex variable like "primary news television station" down to a single binary variable. We do it all the time-- gender, race, and voter affiliation are actually not considered that useful either. In fact, they are increasingly meaningless terms relative to the quantifiable way that they are sometimes treated in social science. That doesn't make them at all useless for determining correlation or causation, but simply draws attention to the fact that these are complex constructs. By comparison, the news source variable is hardly less viable than any other.

When a network broadcasts false and/or misleading information on a regular basis, it's kind of hard to take the "correlation v causation" argument seriously at all.

I've found that overeating junk food and not exercising is well correlated with an increasing waste-line, but it "could" be magical gnomes. That's a reasonable argument, right?

Why are you and Moebius both reading the summary instead of the actual report. If you check the actual report, you will see that the majority of those questions were asked in an objective way.

For example, the editorial's summary of the result:
"72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit "

Was a question in the survey worded as:
"Among economists who have estimated the effect of the health reform law on the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, more think it will increase the deficit."

This is a factual question. Most of the questions ask what scientists, economists, or other experts believe about the particular issue.

If you're that invested in trying to defend it, do whatever makes you feel better.

Not exactly the brightest idea then to claim the questions are subjective when you haven't read them.

I don't know. In my opinion, jobs were created. It's an opinion, so it can't be wrong!

This thing could really work in our favor!

These studies are backwards. It's not "people are stupid for watching Fox" it's "stupid people watch Fox".