Posted on 10/06/2003 2:08:23 PM PDT by leather_strap
We report, you get it wrong By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
Based on several nationwide surveys it conducted with California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as well as the results of other polls, PIPA found that 48 percent of the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group; 22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq; and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq. All three are misperceptions.
The report, Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, also found that the more misperceptions held by the respondent, the more likely it was that s/he both supported the war and depended on commercial television for news about it.
The study is likely to stoke a growing public and professional debate over why mainstream news media - especially the broadcast media - were not more skeptical about the Bush administration's pre-war claims, particularly regarding Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles and ties with al-Qaeda.
"This is a dangerously revealing study," said Marvin Kalb, a former television correspondent and a senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
While Kalb said he had some reservations about the specificity of the questions directed at the respondents, he noted that, "People who have had a strong belief that there is an unholy alliance between politics and the press now have more evidence." Fox, in particular, has been accused of pursuing a chauvinistic agenda in its news coverage despite its motto, "We report, you decide".
Overall, according to PIPA, 60 percent of the people surveyed held at least one of the three misperceptions through September. Thirty percent of respondents had none of those misperceptions.
Surprisingly, the percentage of people holding the misperceptions rose slightly over the last three months. In July, for example, polls found that 45 percent of the public believed US forces had found "clear evidence in Iraq that Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda". In September, 49 percent believed that.
Likewise, those who believed troops had found WMD in Iraq jumped from 21 percent in July to 24 percent in September. One in five respondents said they believed that Iraq had actually used chemical or biological weapons during the war.
In determining what factors could create the misperceptions, PIPA considered a number of variables in the data.
It found a high correlation between respondents with the most misperceptions and their support for the decision to go to war. Only 23 percent of those who held none of the three misperceptions supported the war, while 53 percent who held one misperception did so. Of those who believe that both WMDs and evidence of al-Qaeda ties have been found in Iraq and that world opinion backed the United States, a whopping 86 percent said they supported war.
More specifically, among those who believed that Washington had found clear evidence of close ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda, two-thirds held the view that going to war was the best thing to do. Only 29 percent felt that way among those who did not believe that such evidence had been found.
Another factor that correlated closely with misperceptions about the war was party affiliation, with Republicans substantially "more likely" to hold misperceptions than Democrats. But support for Bush himself as expressed by whether or not the respondent said s/he intended to vote for him in 2004 appeared to be an even more critical factor.
The average frequency of misperceptions among respondents who planned to vote for Bush was 45 percent, while among those who plan to vote for a hypothetical Democrat candidate, the frequency averaged only 17 percent.
Asked "Has the US found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda"? 68 percent of Bush supporters replied affirmatively. By contrast, two of every three Democrat-backers said no.
But news sources also accounted for major differences in misperceptions, according to PIPA, which asked more than 3,300 respondents since May where they "tended to get most of [their] news''. Eighty percent identified broadcast media, while 19 percent cited print media.
Among those who said broadcast media, 30 percent said two or more networks; 18 percent, Fox News; 16 percent, CNN; 24 percent, the three big networks - NBC (14 percent), ABC (11 percent), CBS (9 percent); and three percent, the two public networks, National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far.
Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between.
CBS ranked right behind Fox with a 71 percent score, while CNN and NBC tied as the best-performing commercial broadcast audience at 55 percent. Forty-seven percent of print media readers held at least one misperception.
As to the number of misconceptions held by their audiences, Fox far outscored all of its rivals. A whopping 45 percent of its viewers believed all three misperceptions, while the other commercial networks scored between 12 percent and 16 percent. Only nine percent of readers believed all three, while only four percent of the NPR/PBS audience did.
PIPA found that political affiliation and news source also compound one another. Thus, 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch Fox News said they thought the United States had found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, while 50 percent of Bush supporters who rely on NPR/PBS thought so.
Conversely, 48 percent of Fox viewers who said they would support a Democrat believed that such evidence had been found. But none of the Democrat-backers who relied on NPR/PBS believed it.
The study also debunked the notion that misperceptions were due mainly to the lack of exposure to news.
Among Bush supporters, those who said they follow the news "very closely", were found more likely to hold misperceptions. Those Bush supporters, on the other hand, who say they follow the news "somewhat closely" or "not closely at all" held fewer misperceptions.
Conversely, those Democratic supporters who said they did not follow the news very closely were found to be twice as likely to hold misperceptions as those who said they did, according to PIPA.
(Inter Press Service)
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Ah, yes... revealing: the Shorenstein Center on the Press at Harvard is the group that admitted Al Franken as a "Visiting Fellow", provided adle-brained student interns to help him with his latest "project", and allows The Shorenstein Center to be used (as in use of stationery) to attempt to entrap Vice President Cheney into Mr. Franken's "study" of Administration figures.
Glad to see that the Asia Times is so concerned about our "fair and balanced" media.
That's pretty hilarious, because Bob Edwards was interviewing Terry McAuliff the other day and asked Terry if the Kay Report failed to back Bush's claim that the danger from Saddam was imminent. I'd rather have viewers with misconceptions than hosts with agendas.
There are, of course, many other misperceptions, many of which are more prevalent on the left, but this group did not bother to include those in its polling, which guaranteed that the poll generated the desired result. I went to the website for this bunch and they are some of the most biased pollsters I have yet seen.
Yeah, these guys are disinterested pollsters - NOT!
Doing a Google search, it seems that PIPA is quite popular with the likes of the Village Voice and the Brookings Institute.
In that business, you are known by who quotes you...
The impression I get, If you don't listen to us liberals then you are stupid. Did you see how many time the word misperceptions was used? Thats is a cute liberal word for stupid. I guess PIPA is another liberal fronted think tank.
Try researching election 2000 some time. As a Florida Republican with access to W Palm Beach precinct data, and much other info on DEM. mischief, doing research on the net was a shock. Major American universities - University of Michigan in partical with their supposed vast archive of election data - are misleading the world with selective and inaccurate data.
God bless Jim Robinson.
Well, one out of three is doing better than typical. Troops found WMDs. There were contacts between senior members fot eh Iraqi government and senior members of Al-Queda, not to mention apparent actual training camps on Iraqi soil. The issue is over how significant the finds were.
How can this purport to be a serious study when the questions are so obviously flawed? These are not misperceptions. To take them one at a time.
48 percent of the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group
Links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been demonstrated, time and time again. Iraq hosted training camps, supplied weapons and expertise, and offered sanctuary to al-Qaeda fugitives over a period of at least ten years. The weasel words in this question are "US Troops" and "close". The links between al-Qaeda and Iraq were not discovered by "US Troops", and we could argue from now 'till doomsday about what constitutes "close".
22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq
The Kay report documents a massive and ongoing WMD program in Iraq, which was ample cause for war. This is not a misperception. Before the war, nobody argued that Saddam had WMD actually on-hand as a cause for war, but rather that he was trying continually to acquire or produce them. By asking a question so deceptive and off-the-point, it is predictable that at least 22% of the people would get it wrong.
and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq.
That really depends on how you define world public opinion, doesn't it. The consensus of European politicians and Third-World tyrants was against the war, but does that mean that "world public opinion" was against the war? I am aware of no data on this point. Polls do show that Iraqi public opinion was and is in favor of the war. Isn't that more relevant?
All three are misperceptions.
All three are at odds with the accepted dogma in US academia. But that does not mean that they are misperceptions.
We live in curious times. We seem to have a rational public and an ideological ruling class. Average Americans are basically centrist, prone to balance, compromise, fair shares, reasonable resolutions. Their Congress is polarized, hyperpartisan, responsive to “cause” activists of left and right. Washington regularly misreads the former and bemoans the latter.
Exhibit A was the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. Showing astoundingly bad judgment and an excruciating lack of self-control, he indulged himself in an affair with a White House intern, then lied about it—in legal proceedings, and to the American public. He had also, by some combination of skill and luck, presided over a national prosperity—soaring income and productivity growth and low inflation complete with fiscal surplus —that virtually no one thought possible on January 20, 1993. And his empathy with Americans’ goals and needs was uncanny. The public’s conclusion? Bad man, good president. Censure him and move on. The congressional resolution? Haul out the heavy guns. A year of bitter wrangling, driven by activists on the Clinton-hating right, ending in a partisan House vote for his ouster and acquittal by the Senate (also along mainly partisan lines) and no censure resolution at all. Meanwhile, Washington vacillated between certainty that the latest juicy revelation would finally destroy Clinton’s public support and wishing that statesmen would emerge to lead us out of the mess.
Yeah, this bunch is really unbiased...
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