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.
It would have been extremely interesting to see how many viewers believed that Bush claimed that the threat from Saddam was imminent. Considering that Bob Edwards said exactly that during an interview with Terry McAuliff, methinks a majority of NPR listeners probably believe that as well - and that is a bald-faced lie, as opposed to a matter of interpretation as to whether WMDs have actually been found in Iraq.
As it is, this article manages to misrepresent the misrepresentations of the study, as not too many people bother to run down the original and will accept the Sun's distortions as gospel.