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... 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.

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"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".

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luvdemshrooms said:

In a VERY simplistic world, yes.

Is that the type of world you live in?

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EMAIL OF THE DAY: "I read with interest your post today, Fri 10th Oct, on the poll purporting to show that Fox News viewers are more likely to hold false beliefs. The poll and its associated reporting are evidence of leftist bias, but I disagree with you about how the poll is biased. Notice, all three questions have a false pro-war answer and a true anti-war answer, so that the results are obviously conflating being mis-informed with being pro-war. This is probably not even intentional on the poll authors' part.

Imagine an opposite kind of poll asking, for example:

Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?
Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?
Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?
Was the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the war staged?
A poll asking these or similar questions would doubtless find that Fox News viewers have the most accurate grasp of reality and NPR listeners the least."

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