[mhking]

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[As i mentioned, the B/C & JD! lists are going to float into and out of whack over the forseeable future, while I try to cobble a rig back together for myself. My apologies for any incovenience or misunderstandings in this time frame. New signups/removals may be flaky in this time-frame as well; please bear with me, and keep in mind you may have to FReepmail me more than once for me to get it done. Thanks again!]

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[Publius6961]

"Egregious misconceptions", huh?
This should be good.
I better go read that study.

[snooker]

Hate only gets you so far. You have to fall the rest of the way by yourself.

[sauropod]

Well there you have it. The Ford Foundation funding the study that is reported in the Blight For All.

Unbiased? Suuuuuuuuuuuuure...

[BSunday]

demonstrably untrue

According to what source?
The article cites government studies (probably the mischaracterized prelim WMD report) and public opinion polls.

[coloradan]

The three false beliefs:

# Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

# Weapons of mass destruction have already been found in Iraq.

# World opinion favored the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

[...]

Twenty-three percent of those who get their news from NPR or PBS believed in at least one of the mistaken claims. In contrast, 80 percent of Fox News viewers held at least one of the three incorrect beliefs.

Among broadcast network viewers there also were differences. Seventy-one percent of those who relied on CBS for news held a false impression, as did 61 percent of ABC's audience and 55 percent of NBC viewers. Fifty-five percent of CNN viewers and 47 percent of Americans who rely on the print media as their primary source of information also held at least one misperception.

______________

A reasonable response from FOX would be a similar survey, with different misperceptions:

There is conclusive proof that gun control makes people safer.

For a majority of years the program has been in effect, welfare has reduced the absolute number of people living in poverty in this country.

There is a loophole that allows criminals to buy guns at gun shows.

Bush's tax cut takes money from the poor and middle class, and gives it to the wealthy.

Columbine killers Harris and Klebold bought their guns at a gun show.

How do you suppose people who only listened to NPR would fare on this test?

[Pete]

When evidence surfaces that a significant portion of the public has just got a hole in the picture ... this is a potential problem in the way democracy functions," says Clay Ramsay, research director for the Washington-based Program on International Policy Attitudes, which studies foreign-policy issues.

This piece is nothing more than the latest shot by liberals at trying to silence conservatives (along with recent attacks on Limbaugh and the revisiting of the Fairness Doctrine.)

For those who didn't read the article, they have three statements they claim are false. The second is that WMDs have been found in Iraq. Didn't Kay say they had found some already - e.g. a vile of botulism toxin? I am sure there are other Freepers who have paid closer attention that could answer that.

The bottom line is that this "study" was conducted by a couple of far left organizations with the intent to discredit what they view to be conservative media and to boost the far left NPR.

Note one more thing. They say that 80% of Fox viewers hold one of the three opinions they claim is false. However, 71% of CBS viewers and 61% of ABC viewers also fall into that category according to their study. Of course, that doesn't make it into the headline. The question arises. Given those percentages, could it be that NPR is incorrect?

[Steely Glint]

Yet another transparent bogus assault on the Right by the anti-American Left.

Hey, Leftists! Move to Cuba where you belong!

[GSWarrior]

Danger Will Robinson.

Theoretical groundwork for the inevitable upcoming assault on the internet, talk radio and the free exchange of ideas?

[knuthom]

"Each was questioned about whether he held any of the following three beliefs, characterized by the center as "egregious misperceptions":

Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Depends on whether you believe the Salman Pak reports.

Weapons of mass destruction have already been found in Iraq.

Depends on whether you are a Kurd.

World opinion favored the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

To date, as measured by government reports and accepted public surveys, each of those propositions is false, according to the center.

They are using accepted public surveys to determine truth???

[jpl]

In a related study, readers of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun are four times more likely than others to believe that Steven Hatfill sent anthrax in the mail to Mohammed Atta's landlord.

[chmst]

Wait a minute. They surveyed 3,334 people right? Most single news source people get thier news from broadcast news. So... how many out of this group watched FOX? Where was it taken? Could it be that they polled say 5 FOX watchers and got 4 crappy answers?

[Tacis]

"# Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "

This has always been a strange one to me. There are neocummunists (a Columbia U. professor, for one) who rant and rave at the administration's idiocy for even suggesting this. Some media pimps go on at length about when Cheney, or Bush, or Rummy said what about the connection.

How do they know that there is NO connection between 9/11 and Saddam? I can see questions yet unanswered, but these lefties laugh at the suggestion that Saddam had a hand in 9/11; they KNOW there is no connection. How do they know this?

[rightbanker]

The cynic in me -- which is a big broad streak of my personality -- responds to this by saying "Of course, it's true." People, left or right or center, mostly want confirmation of what they already believe. they don't want their beliefs challenged and dissected. The media, right wing media included, has figured this out. So they basically play to their targeted audiences. The targeted audiences watch those news programs targeted at them in order to be comforted and "confirmed" not to be discomforted and disconfirmed.

That's why people who stray to far from the party line on boards like this or RAT underground get banned. We don't want to bother debating the nasty bothersome other, who might occasional have a point, who might occassionally challenge an article of faith of ours in a persuasive way.

Like Nietzsche say, human beings are herd animals.

That's my cynical rant for today.

[dirtboy]

Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

That's a egregious misrepresentation of what was asked. The survey asked if folks believed that Saddam was linked with al Qaeda, not that Saddam was tied to 9-11. Two very different animals.

All that's missing from this drivel is imminence...

[VOA]

Funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation

...enemies...domestic...

[.cnI redruM]

This is just a rough estimate, but the listeners and supporters of NPR are about 50 times more likely than Fox fans to cite propaganda studies to belittle and insult their opponents.

[DustyMoment]

The problem with this "study" begins with - University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs and just gets worse.

From what I saw in the study, the perceptions were pretty much all dumbed down leftist perceptions, to wit: Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The only segment of the population that believes this claptrap are those who get their news from the lamestreams. I don't believe that Fox News ever tried to spin an association between Saddam and al-Qaida into Saddam directly planning 9/11. This was an assessment from the liberal press who made a link where there wasn't one.

The problem with this "study" is that it set out to prove that Fox News viewers were stupid and spun the results to get what they set out to prove. In the final analysis, it doesn't make the "study" credible.

[First_Salute]

Typical abuse of the requirements of a good study.

If the theory that generated the study, is that peoples' opinions are the result of what they gather from a single news source and their single news source is incorrect, and therefore their opinions are incorrect ... then the study should have examined enough of the class of news sources (for example, TV, in this case) to take a sample of the class (at least 4 networks, for example), and then initially examine both the correct info-bites and the incorrect info-bites.

A table of what each news network got correct and got incorrect, should have been worked up from that data.

Viewers would be sampled by exposing them to various news programs combinations from the table, and then cross-checked with other combinations from that table --- you would want to discover, here, the viewers' inclinations to "get it right" versus "get it wrong," both dependent upon what they watched and independent of what they watched.

Etc. Etc. The point is that the above study, as reported, is rubbish and a waste of the taxpayers' money.

Now, many will say, "But these foundations paid for these studies." Well, that too, is incorrect.

These foundations are leftist because it is part of the faustian bargain by which they are allowed by socialist officials and socialist programs to "go in peace" (that is, without being hectored by Jesse Jackson & Co.) Your tax dollars in support of the socialists, is what triggered the "dumpster diving" by the "study group" and will pick up much of the overhead of the "study" as well as almost all the "reverberations" through "academia," though indeed, the foundations paid for the incidentals and labor on an academic committee's "invoice."

Leftist academics will get paid, and pet projects of theirs are now funded, but the far more expensive socialist agenda is paid for by the taxpayer.

Thanks to a "study" that was designed to be used as "proof" by leftists though it is merely "suggestive" of one possibility given impractically limited choices.