Media Misinformation 2010 vs. 2008

The American Thinker ^ | December 20, 2010 | John Ziegler

[Scanian]

Thanks to the University of Maryland (via the New York Times), the left has come up with an explanation for the Republican landslide in 2010: the voters were ignorant thanks to biased media coverage perpetrated mostly by Fox News.

This conclusion, based on a study/poll which has only slightly more credibility than a Keith Olbermann rape rant, caused me great amusement because I commissioned not one, but two scientific polls about the 2008 election which came to virtually the same conclusion (minus the Fox News part). Those surveys were universally, and at times maliciously, attacked by the left to the point where the Zogby organization refused to duplicate the first one because of all the blowback.

The purpose of my polls was to quantify the impact of the media's remarkable pro-Obama and anti-Palin bias on the electorate for my documentary, Media Malpractice. What we found back then was that McCain voters and those "exposed" to Fox News and talk radio were far more likely to answer our simple multiple-choice questions correctly than Obama voters and those "exposed" to any other media outlet. The most dramatic example was that those voters "exposed" to "conservative" media were far more informed when it came to simply knowing that it was the Democratic Party which controlled congress at the time. This turned out to be rather determinative when it came to voters' presidential choice.

Conversely, we discovered that it was only when it came to knowing all the negative stories about Sarah Palin (an incredible 98% of those "exposed" to MSNBC knew that Palin was the candidate with the pregnant teenage daughter) that those consumers of the more liberal outlets excelled. Otherwise, fans of liberal media were far more likely to get our easy questions wrong.

[Gondring]

IIRC, previously, this same “research” group claimed that FNC viewers were less informed because they said that WMD had been found in Iraq (which was true, but they scored as false).

[gusopol3]

Also, scored wrong for “economy worsening,” released as unemployment went up to 9.8%

[tutstar]

Bump

[Carley]

So the value of our homes really rose rather than dropped

So we all have good paying jobs instead of being unemployed

So the government did not take over health care, with OUR tax dollars

So the government did not take over the auto industry, with OUR tax dollars

So the unemployment rate is really about 4.8% rather than 9.6%

Silly, stupid us.

[Scanian]

Most definitely...a year or so ago, they found a considerable quantity of mustard gas stored in Iraq.

Halliburton buried it there, I suppose.

[Huebolt]

The "No Labels" effort is typical of the lying swine in the leftist media. Talk about dumbing down the electorate.

If a liberal candidate cannot stand up and shout "I AM LEFTIST SOCIALIST DEMOCRAT AND PROUD OF IT!", then they should STFU and get out of public life altogether.

"No Labels" sure takes "candid" out ot the term "candidate" and puts in something else. Liar, trickster, con-artist, criminal, bait-and-switch all come to mind.

THAT'S IT! Call the "no labels" party the BAIT AND SWITCH PARTY! ! ! ! !

It's official...someone tell Rush.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

No one is more willing than I am to acknowledge that the average voter is far too ignorant of important information and that the recent dramatic increase in partisan "journalism" has allowed far too many people to choose their own facts.

Well, all the worse for you then. There is NO WAY to prevent people from choosing their own facts. We all do it. The advent of open partisanship in journalism is simply a return to the status quo ante the founding of the wire services in the middle of the Nineteenth Century.

The wire services succeeded in homogenizing perceptions and swindling people into believing in the "objectivity" of journalists; the advent of FNC and the internet merely is breaking the back of a monopoly establishment on published opinion. Once the monopoly is shattered, we can see that the establishment was never objective in the first place. It was always about promoting journalism - and promoting politicians who promoted the journalism world view.

But by bathing in its own ignorance, partisanship and hypocrisy, this study does nothing to further the cause of rectifying these obvious problems.

That much is obvious.

[Scanian]

You don’t need to spend more than 5 minutes on either MSNBC or CNN to find a whole bunch of people who “Choose their own facts.”

Misrepresenting the content of congressional bills is SOP for those people...they really have no shame.

[coloradan]

Nor the NYT, LATimes, NPR, etc. Articles about guns are routinely wrong in multiple aspects, articles about government routinely presume that the only possible solution is more government. The slant is so steep nearly every story is an avalanche of leftism.

[RonDog]

For MORE about John Ziegler’s analysis of “Media Malpractice” during the 2008 election, see:

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/