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OfflineEchoVortex
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Fox Viewers Most Misinformed * 1
    #2010052 - 10/14/03 10:21 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

This one is a no-brainer to anyone with a brain, but for those on this forum without brains it'll probably be a no-go.

The Washington Post

Fact-Free News

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A23

Ever worry that millions of your fellow Americans are walking around knowing things that you don't? That your prospects for advancement may depend on your mastery of such arcana as who won the Iraqi war or where exactly Europe is?

Then don't watch Fox News. The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong.

Researchers from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint project of several academic centers, some of them based at the University of Maryland) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm, have spent the better part of the year tracking the public's misperceptions of major news events and polling people to find out just where they go to get things so balled up. This month they released their findings, which go a long way toward explaining why there's so little common ground in American politics today: People are proceeding from radically different sets of facts, some so different that they're altogether fiction.

In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three.

The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were "the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions." Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three.

Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed. But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who watch PBS believed this to be the case.

Misperceptions can also be the result of inattention, of course. If you nod off for just a nanosecond in the middle of Tom Brokaw intoning, "U.S. inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction today," you could think we'd just uncovered Hussein's nuclear arsenal. So the wily researchers also controlled for intensity of viewership, and concluded that, "in the case of those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly increases the likelihood of misperceptions." Particularly when that news includes hyping every false lead in Iraq as the certain prelude to uncovering a massive WMD cache.

One question inevitably raised by these findings is whether Fox News is failing or succeeding. Over at CBS, the news that 71 percent of viewers hold one of these mistaken notions should be cause for concern, but whether such should be the case at Fox because 80 percent of their viewers are similarly mistaken is not at all clear. Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the other guys at Fox have long demonstrated a clearer commitment to changing public policy than to reporting it, and an even clearer commitment to reporting it in such a way as to change it.

Take a wild flight of fancy with me and assume for just a moment that one major goal over at Fox is to ensure Bush's reelection. Surely, anyone who believes that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were in cahoots, that we've found the WMD and that Bush is revered among the peoples of the world -- all of these known facts to nearly half the Fox viewers -- is a good bet to be a Bush voter in next year's contest. By this standard -- moving votes into Bush's column and keeping them there -- Fox has to be judged a stunning success. It's not so hot on conveying information as such, but mere empiricism must seem so terribly vulgar to such creatures of refinement as Murdoch and Ailes.


The writer will answer questions about this column during a Live Online discussion at 4 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com.

meyersonh@washpost.com



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Anonymous

Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010080 - 10/14/03 10:31 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

So FoxNews, the most notoriosly conservative news station, also happens to (doh!) have more straightup MISINFORMATION (as in they misinform people!), PBS and NPR have the least, but ask any of the cocksmoking conservative (and wannabe libertatian) retards here and they'll tell you that PBS and NPR are so liberal they're full of shit?

Obviously they paint a more accurate portrait of reality than some other stations, at least if you're concerned with inane points such as the difference between fact and fantasy.

Good article but I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears once again.


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010146 - 10/14/03 10:59 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Wingnutx posted this already in the thread "The Liberal Media", where this poll was first discussed, but I'm sure he won't mind me reposting it.

From Andrew Sullivan:

Quote:

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."




pinky


--------------------


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Anonymous

Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred] * 1
    #2010167 - 10/14/03 11:10 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

So basically, FoxNews is all about portraying the war in the most positive way possible, whether it be with actual facts (like the kind that are really true), or when they run out of those, with who cares what, cause they've still got public opinion to shape, right?


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred] * 1
    #2010211 - 10/14/03 11:34 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

pinksharkmark said:
Wingnutx posted this already in the thread "The Liberal Media", where this poll was first discussed, but I'm sure he won't mind me reposting it.

From Andrew Sullivan:

Quote:

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."




pinky





This is a totally meaningless post, pinky.

It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support. Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story.

Second of all, the author of the e-mail to Andrew Sullivan assumes with no evidence whatsoever other than his biased opinions that a poll would "doubtless" find that Fox News viewers have a better grasp of reality with regard to certain questions. One of those questions: "Do the majority of Iraqis support the invasion?" has not and CAN not even properly be gauged and proven, yet this person seems to think it is HAS been proven beyond a doubt, thereby displaying his OWN ignorance and misinformation.

Empty verbiage, all of it. Better luck next time.



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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010269 - 10/15/03 12:03 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support.

Exactly. What do the facts support? The author then goes on to ask four questions on which a large number of people also hold erroneous beliefs (as we have seen illustrated amply in this very forum). It would indeed be interesting to do a study using exactly the same methodology as the one dissected in your first post, but with those questions substituted and see what the results would be.

Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story.

As do NPR listeners and PBS viewers. All the author of the e-mail is pointing out (correctly) is by selecting the proper questions, one can make FOX viewers look bad or PBS viewers look bad.

One of those questions: "Do the majority of Iraqis support the invasion?" has not and CAN not even properly be gauged and proven...

Really? Do polls not count? If they don't, then by what method can the assertion "most people in other countries opposed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein" be properly gauged and proven?

pinky


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OfflineBaby_Hitler
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010282 - 10/15/03 12:07 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

You hurt inside don't you?


This poll proves that people tend to believe what they want to believe. Perhaps they should have conducted a poll as to whether water is wet or not.


--------------------
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
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InvisibleSenor_Doobie
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Baby_Hitler] * 1
    #2010456 - 10/15/03 01:10 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Yup, I have to agree with Mark. The article oozes bias, and so does the fact that all of the questions have real anti-war answers and fake pro-war answers.



--------------------
"America: Fuck yeah!" -- Alexthegreat

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”  -- Thomas Jefferson

The greatest sin of mankind is ignorance.

The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. --Salena Zeto (9/23/16)


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred] * 1
    #2010584 - 10/15/03 02:19 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?




He never used the word imminent but somehow that idea was definitely pushed forward. I find these kind of semantic gymnastics fairly tedious though. The Bush administration wrongly portrayed Iraq as a serious threat to world security. Thats all you have to know really.

Quote:

Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?





Undetermined.

Quote:

Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?





I would say Yes. Especially if you include the precursors to WMDS as arms. Its a shame the US took thousands of pages out of the Iraqi weapons declaration. Then we might have known exactly what was sold.

Quote:

Was the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the war staged?




Havent seen proof either way. From what I have seen I would tend to say yes it was staged.



--------------------
Always Smi2le


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred] * 1
    #2010585 - 10/15/03 02:19 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Exactly. What do the facts support? The author then goes on to ask four questions on which a large number of people also hold erroneous beliefs (as we have seen illustrated amply in this very forum). It would indeed be interesting to do a study using exactly the same methodology as the one dissected in your first post, but with those questions substituted and see what the results would be.

It would be interesting, yes. Such a study has yet to be conducted, but the author claims to know what the results would "doubtlessly" be. That claim is baseless. Whether you think it is "correct" or not is of absolutely zero interest to me.

As do NPR listeners and PBS viewers. All the author of the e-mail is pointing out (correctly) is by selecting the proper questions, one can make FOX viewers look bad or PBS viewers look bad.

And which facts do PBS viewers and NPR listeners take to exist which do not in fact exist? Give me a specific example, and show proof to back it up. You're conflating the PBS/NPR audience with a few members of this forum, I suppose because they're all supposedly "liberal" and therefore supposedly share precisely the same beliefs.

Really? Do polls not count? If they don't, then by what method can the assertion "most people in other countries opposed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein" be properly gauged and proven?

Which polls are you referring to? No polls have been conducted outside of Baghdad, and the handful carried out in Baghdad were not conducted according to the same standards possible in countries with functioning communications systems. If a poll conducted in New York were taken to represent the views of all Americans, people in California, Texas, the Midwest, the Deep South, and elsewhere would be howling in protest. Polls conducted in developed nations must be representative in terms of age, sex, income, political affiliation, AND region. But I suppose the assumption of those who take such limited polls to be definitive must be that Iraqis are somehow more backward and therefore have less variation in viewpoints.

Furthermore, the three questions addressed in the original study are far, far more relevant than the ones the author proposes because they cut straight to the heart of the justifications given for the war in the first place. If Bush had said, "We're doing this solely for the benefit of the Iraqi people, at a tremendous cost to ourselves in lives and money, with no real national defense purposes served" and the Congress and American people agreed to that, those questions might carry importance. Those are NOT the terms, however, upon which the American people agreed to sanction the war.


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred] * 1
    #2010586 - 10/15/03 02:20 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

The author then goes on to ask four questions on which a large number of people also hold erroneous beliefs (as we have seen illustrated amply in this very forum).




Im calling you on that one. Please prove these beliefs are erroneous.


--------------------
Always Smi2le


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Baby_Hitler] * 1
    #2010591 - 10/15/03 02:23 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

You hurt inside don't you?

Hahahaa, not when I'm laughing heartily at lame, completely off-target, ad hominem non sequiters like that one.

This poll proves that people tend to believe what they want to believe. Perhaps they should have conducted a poll as to whether water is wet or not.

Nope, it proves simply that Fox is not a news organization but a propaganda organ, and that people who rely on it as their main source of news are dupes.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: GazzBut] * 1
    #2010599 - 10/15/03 02:28 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Havent seen proof either way. From what I have seen I would tend to say yes it was staged.

I don't know if it was literally staged or not (i.e., the people there were rounded up and/or paid to participate) but what I do know is that the footage shown in the US was taken close up to make the crowd appear larger than it actually was. Footage shown in other parts of the world included wide-angle shots that demonstrated that the square was rather barren of people.


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OfflineBaby_Hitler
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010800 - 10/15/03 04:48 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Nope, it proves simply that Fox is not a news organization but a propaganda organ, and that people who rely on it as their main source of news are dupes.

Care to explain exactly how it proves this?


--------------------
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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010864 - 10/15/03 05:54 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

There seems to be alot of evidence suggesting it was staged but how reliable this is, who knows? Its hard to believe anything these days relating to Iraq!


--------------------
Always Smi2le


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Offlinest0nedphucker
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: GazzBut] * 1
    #2010866 - 10/15/03 05:58 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Nope, it proves simply that Fox is not a news organization but a propaganda organ, and that people who rely on it as their main source of news are dupes.




I'd say anyone that relies on one source is a dupe....

*cough* Guardian *cough*


--------------------
The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men.


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: st0nedphucker] * 1
    #2010874 - 10/15/03 06:19 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Who exactly are you directing that comment at?


--------------------
Always Smi2le


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Baby_Hitler] * 1
    #2010924 - 10/15/03 07:27 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Care to explain exactly how it proves this?

Fox viewers were in error about certain key facts by a greater percentage than people who get their news elsewhere. They were in error by a FAR greater percentage than the audience for PBS/NPR.

The purpose of a news organization is to disseminate facts. We may therefore conclude that Fox either a) broadcasts incorrect information, b) broadcasts information with a distorted emphasis, or c) broadcasts correct information but their viewers either don't understand the English language or are too mentally incompetent to make sense of what is being said.

I was simply trying to give Fox viewers the benefit of the doubt and therefore eliminated answer c), which only leaves a) and b) as possibilities. To disseminate false or distorted information for political or ideological aims is commonly known as "propaganda." The ideological bent of Fox News management and staff is well known. A quick primer on the subject can be found here .

Additionally, as stonedphucker pointed out, anybody who gets all of their news from one source, right OR left, is a dupe.

To say that this poll merely shows that people "believe what they want to believe" is patently incorrect and a copout. There are facts and there are untruths, and Fox viewers believe untruths to a higher degree than others. This is either because Fox distorts the news or because their viewers are inherently stupid. Take your pick.


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Offlinest0nedphucker
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex] * 1
    #2010939 - 10/15/03 07:51 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

All news is biased to a certain extent. Facts are constantly distorted reworded, omitted or even made up to boost a particular case or stance.

Quote:

To say that this poll merely shows that people "believe what they want to believe" is patently incorrect and a copout.




I'd agree that people do indeed believe what they want to believe, for instance an anti-war protestor isn't going to accept stories praising amercian troops for their bravery in the face of such adversity whereas he would openly embrace a story that details the civilian deaths caused by US troops and the barabraic treatment the Iraqis are recieving....

All in all though i'd say the majority of people are stupid, in the sense that they have no real understanding of the situation.




--------------------
The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: st0nedphucker] * 1
    #2010981 - 10/15/03 08:41 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Yes, all news is biased to a certain extent but that doesn't mean that all news is biased to the same extent. Some news is clearly more biased than others.

There are plenty of people who opposed the war who have no trouble accepting that American soldiers were brave in the execution of their duties. Anybody who does his or her job and does it effectively in the face of death is brave, but saying that somebody is courageous in the face of danger doesn't necessarily mean that what they are doing is correct.

Facts are facts. People CHOOSE either to accept or ignore them. Let's say for a second that the tables were turned and that US Forces had found a nuclear suitcase bomb in Iraq that could have been smuggled into the United States and used to decimate an entire city, or biological weapons that could effectively be employed to accomplish the same thing. I, for one, would NOT be claiming that they were planted there by US forces, because such a conspiracy would require the cooperation of too many people to stay a secret for long. I would accept that I was wrong, I would admit it, and declare publicly that George Bush knew something that I didn't and made the right decision given the information he had at his disposal. I certainly don't want myself and the people I care about to be killed in some act of terrorist mass murder. To paraphrase Aldous Huxley, I would "sit like a child before the facts" and change my thinking to fit the facts, rather than the other way around. It's easy to do once you realize that it is more important to be correct NOW than it is to maintain some fantasy that you were ALWAYS correct and were never wrong. Many people, conservatives included, who supported Bush's war did just that once they came around the accepting the FACT that Saddam did not pose the threat to the world that Bush said and implied he did, and accepting the FACT that this war is going to cost much, much more money and grief than Bush made it seem it would. Survival is a matter of adapting oneself to changing circumstances, which also means adapting oneself to new information and new facts. People who are incapable of doing so ARE, by definition, STUPID. They live in denial and make one mistake after another until finally their mistakes catch up with them and result in disaster.


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2010984 - 10/15/03 08:46 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Well said.


--------------------
Always Smi2le


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2011211 - 10/15/03 10:52 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

And which facts do PBS viewers and NPR listeners take to exist which do not in fact exist? Give me a specific example, and show proof to back it up.

As you are well aware, until a poll is taken, I can give you no specific example other than those given in the poll referred to in your first post in the thread. However, if you are willing to accept the results of the poll you posted as accurate, it can't have escaped your notice that
Quote:

...in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions...


We therefore already know that roughly one out of four PBS viewers/NPR listeners holds at least one "fact" to be true which is not. Is it your contention that the percentage would be lower if asked different questions? How can you know that?

You're conflating the PBS/NPR audience with a few members of this forum...

I know that some members of this forum watch PBS (hell, I sometimes do when I am on vacation in Canada) and listen to NPR -- or at least claim to do so. There have been numerous recent references here to PBS specials.

...I suppose because they're all supposedly "liberal" and therefore supposedly share precisely the same beliefs.

A shared subset of beliefs is what defines someone as either "Conservative" or "Liberal". A lower percentage of self-declared Liberals watch FOX news than of self-declared Conservatives, and fewer Cons listen to NPR than Libs. Clearly not every Libbie believes every single thing that another randomly selected Libbie does, however.

But to pretend that Libbies (or PBS viewers) are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact simply because they are Libbies (or PBS viewers) is absurd.

All I point out is that an individual's personal philosophy makes him more prone to accept some ideas (and "facts") with less critical examination than other ideas or "facts". Surely this concept can't be a new one to you.

No polls have been conducted outside of Baghdad...

So sorry, that is incorrect. The first polls we saw linked in this forum a month or so ago in fact excluded Baghdad, and came under fire from some here who claimed they were irrelevant because they only surveyed "the boonies" where things were going well. I am not going to search for those posts again, but the first widely reported poll covered three areas -- Basra, Mosul, and I'm sorry I forget the third area. The numbers supporting the invasion were higher there than in the recent Baghdad polls.

...and the handful carried out in Baghdad were not conducted according to the same standards possible in countries with functioning communications systems.

Some would argue that the polls conducted by phone are less accurate because the sample size is so much smaller (normally a bit less than a thousand people) than was the case for the Baghdad polls.

You may question the validity of the polls, but they are all we have to work with. For what it's worth, I have always mistrusted public opinion polls myself. The statisticians claim they are accurate within a few percentage points, but I have a hard time understanding how a sample of a thousand people in a country of 280 million (such as the US), all of whom have different regional perspectives, can be that accurate. I will admit that I am a layman in this area, however -- the statisticians' claims may in fact be valid.

Furthermore, the three questions addressed in the original study are far, far more relevant than the ones the author proposes because they cut straight to the heart of the justifications given for the war in the first place.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! First you say "It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support. Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story," now you try to dismiss the alternate set of questions because they are in your opinion far, far less "relevant"?

Which is it?

If this is strictly about misperceptions of fact, not about pro-war or anti-war, why is one "fact" more relevant than another "fact"?

Finally, let me observe that no causal relationship has been demonstrated here. This study in no way shows that the people who hold misperceptions received them from FOX News. The author of the op-ed himself admits that when he says, "Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed."

Do FOX viewers form their worldview solely from FOX? Nope. They read newspapers, magazines, discuss things with their buddies (who are usually pretty like-minded or they wouldn't be buddies), have drunken dialogues at bars with total strangers, etc.

To illustrate this even further, neither the author of the op-ed piece nor any poster to this forum has provided an instance of FOX News claiming:

1) the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

2) the weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

3) most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein.

Since Fox News never reported any of the three above, does it not stand to reason that the respondents got those misperceptions elsewhere? Note again that it was not merely the FOX viewers who held these views -- fully "sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge."

You claim the e-mail reprinted by Andrew Sullivan was nothing but excess verbiage. I say the post from Myerson was nothing more than excess verbiage. I don't know about you, but I didn't need to see that poll to know that right-leaning people tend to watch right-leaning news programs, and left-leaning people tend to watch left-leaning news programs. And of course, neither the Right nor the Left are free from their own misperceptions.

pinky


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2011419 - 10/15/03 01:51 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

yeah all news sources are biased.
so how about this: Fox news is more biased than PBS or NPR?
is that fair and balanced?

as for that email, I'd agree that it's excess verbiage. the questions he proposes for his poll are not really relevant and they don't deal with verifiable facts. let's examine the statements in the original article:

1. we have uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

2. we have found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

3. most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein


all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one)

now the questions from the email:

Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?

a matter of opinion. although President Bush never actually used the words "imminent threat" to describe Iraq, whether he made that claim (through various methods) is open to debate.

Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?

I've seen polls both ways so I can't answer this.
this is the worst question of the four. what exactly does he mean by this? does he mean did the Iraqis support it before the war? after the war? how can you take an accurate poll about how Iraqis feel about the invasion when the occupation continues? I doubt people there feel free to speak their minds. again, this question is open to debate and not really relevent in determining if a certain news source is biased.

Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?

also open to debate, the US didn't sell significant quantities of weapons, but selling anthrax cultures can be considered "significant".

Was the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the war staged?

yet another question without a simple yes or no answer. I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people.

if NPR listeners get these questions "wrong" in a hypothetical poll, they would merely be expressing their opinions, whereas the the FOX news viewers were wrong on statements of FACT.



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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2011624 - 10/15/03 02:54 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

A lot of what you raise is useless speculation anyway, since none of us know the exact wording of the questions, or even the form in which the questions were phrased. For example, is each presented as a "true" or "false" decision, or is it phrased as "Is it your opinion that...."? The answers will be different depending on the phrasing.

all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one)

As can the four supplied by the e-mail writer, and numerous others which would serve the same purpose.

By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few.

a matter of opinion. although President Bush never actually used the words "imminent threat" to describe Iraq, whether he made that claim (through various methods) is open to debate.

Oh, please. He never made the claim. He in fact made the opposite claim -- that the time to act is before the threat becomes imminent. This is not open to debate. It can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no". If you are going to start hemming and hawing around the issue and opening it up to "various methods", let's apply the same standards to the three questions in the survey, shall we? For example,

1. we have uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

It is a known fact that documents were discovered in one of the Baghdad ministries (by a reporter from the Toronto Star) which outline plans to invite bin Laden himself for discussions with Iraq's head honchos. It is a known fact that al Qaeda members were in Iraq, as were other terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abua Abbas. Is it not likely that some people responding to the poll skimmed the question and overlooked the "close working relationship" qualifier in the question, just as so many people obviously overlooked Bush's phrase of "before it becomes imminent"? Of course it is likely. We have seen demonstrated on a daily basis in this forum alone how frequently people misread things.

It is unfortunate that the poll doesn't give a breakdown by question of the percentages of people answering them. My guess is that that one in particular is the one most prone to interpretation.

how can you take an accurate poll about how Iraqis feel about the invasion when the occupation continues? I doubt people there feel free to speak their minds.

Oh, please. You have read the article -- people were shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds. This was so unusual an occurence to the pollsters that they saw fit to emphasize it.

And you can't seriously pretend to believe that people are less likely to give honest answers to a Gallup pollster today than they were while the Ba'athists were in power.

Once again, we are stymied by the question of how accurate polls really are -- but if we apply that to this instance then we must also apply it to whatever polls purport to show the majority of people in other countries opposed the war. Note how sloppily phrased that question is, by the way "most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein". Depending on how one selects "other countries", that statement can be either true or false. It should have been phrased "most people in the world backed the US war against Saddam Hussein", and even then it ignores the fact that other countries were involved -- most notably the UK and Australia.

also open to debate, the US didn't sell significant quantities of weapons, but selling anthrax cultures can be considered "significant".

Not open to debate. We are talking "quantities", here. The US sold almost none. As for selling anthrax cultures, anthrax was less "significant" than any other weapon Iraq possessed, wasn't it, since Hussein never used any before allegedly destroying whatever he once had. He did however use lots and lots of Soviet tanks and artillery and French helicopters and Chinese rockets.

I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people.

Oh, please. This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE. This is not "staging", the way Michael Moore stages incidents in his mockumentaries, this is adding "sizzle to the steak". If there is no steak, you can't add sizzle to it no matter what your camera angles are.

if NPR listeners get these questions "wrong" in a hypothetical poll, they would merely be expressing their opinions, whereas the the FOX news viewers were wrong on statements of FACT.

Again, we don't know that. First of all, as I have shown, we have no way of knowing if the "correct" answer for at least one of the three questions is fact at all. Secondly, without knowing the exact phrasing of the questions asked, we can't know if the respondents knew they were expected to pass judgements on "facts" or merely to state their opinion. Thirdly, if an NPR listener was to claim the toppling was staged (it wasn't), that Bush had said Hussein's threat was imminent (he didn't), that the US sold significant quantities of arms to Iraq (they didn't) and that a majority of Iraqis opposed the invasion (they didn't), then that NPR listener would be as wrong on the "facts" as the respondents to the poll being discussed here.

pinky


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OfflineBaby_Hitler
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2011661 - 10/15/03 03:05 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

The purpose of a news organization is to disseminate facts. We may therefore conclude that Fox either a) broadcasts incorrect information, b) broadcasts information with a distorted emphasis, or c) broadcasts correct information but their viewers either don't understand the English language or are too mentally incompetent to make sense of what is being said.


Sounds like you believe what you want to believe.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2013073 - 10/15/03 10:22 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

We therefore already know that roughly one out of four PBS viewers/NPR listeners holds at least one "fact" to be true which is not. Is it your contention that the percentage would be lower if asked different questions? How can you know that?


It did not escape my attention that 23% of the PBS/NPR audience got one of the questions wrong, and it was never my intention to claim that they never get anything wrong. I should have phrased my question in the form: "which questions would the PBS/NPR audience get wrong more often than Fox viewers?" although I thought that would have been obvious given the context of your contention that such questions exist.

Given the great gap between Fox and PBS/NPR audiences (80% vs. 23% for one misconception; 45% versus merely 4% for all three), you're going to have a hard time convincing me without solid proof that there is ANY question of fact on which the PBS/NPR audience will perform worse overall than the Fox audience.

I know that some members of this forum watch PBS (hell, I sometimes do when I am on vacation in Canada) and listen to NPR -- or at least claim to do so. There have been numerous recent references here to PBS specials.

Fallacy of the unrepresentative sample. You assume that a subset of the PBS/NPR audience represents the whole audience. You may or may not know this, but a large portion of the PBS/NPR audience is made up of Republicans and other conservatives, generally of the New England/William F. Buckley mold. They find it's the only place on television and radio where they can get really good financial news coverage. And last time I checked, the majority of public broadcasting viewers/listeners are not magic mushroom users.

A shared subset of beliefs is what defines someone as either "Conservative" or "Liberal". A lower percentage of self-declared Liberals watch FOX news than of self-declared Conservatives, and fewer Cons listen to NPR than Libs. Clearly not every Libbie believes every single thing that another randomly selected Libbie does, however.
But to pretend that Libbies (or PBS viewers) are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact simply because they are Libbies (or PBS viewers) is absurd.


I never said that PBS viewers or liberals are incapable of holding incorrect beliefs on matters of fact. I was merely emphasizing the fact, and doing so admittedly with some glee, that the PBS/NPR audience (which, I reiterate, includes more than a small percentage of conservatives), according to all of the evidence presently available, holds certain incorrect beliefs by a far smaller percentage than Fox viewers.

All I point out is that an individual's personal philosophy makes him more prone to accept some ideas (and "facts") with less critical examination than other ideas or "facts". Surely this concept can't be a new one to you.

And all I point out is that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear, and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance.

So sorry, that is incorrect. The first polls we saw linked in this forum a month or so ago in fact excluded Baghdad, and came under fire from some here who claimed they were irrelevant because they only surveyed "the boonies" where things were going well. I am not going to search for those posts again, but the first widely reported poll covered three areas -- Basra, Mosul, and I'm sorry I forget the third area. The numbers supporting the invasion were higher there than in the recent Baghdad polls.

I have yet to see a nationwide poll of Iraq in which the sample is specifically chosen to be representative of the entire population. There are formulas that statisticians choose in order to make sure that even a sample of a thousand people is in fact representative, but such formulas are usable only when you can access just about anybody through their telephone. Choosing enthusiastic "volunteers" for polls is bad practice, which is why it surprises me that Gallup made such a fuss about emphasizing that fact.

Until full services are restored and a truly scientific poll can be taken, the answer is undetermined. My guess is that once everything is returned to normal, the majority of Iraqis will adopt the position that "all's well that ends well" and say that say they're glad the invasion happened. Of course this will not take into account the families of the thousands who died, but I guess that's beside the point. For the time being, however, the question is still an unknown, and for the e-mail author to assume that it IS a known demonstrates that he or she is misinformed.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! First you say "It's not a matter of the true answers being "anti-war" or the false answers being "pro-war" at all. It's a question of what the facts support or do not support. Fox viewers believe that facts or evidence exist WHICH DO NOT. Period. End of story," now you try to dismiss the alternate set of questions because they are in your opinion far, far less "relevant"?
Which is it?


The author of the e-mail asserted that the questions posed were chosen as some kind of liberal plot to make Fox viewers look bad. I was merely pointing out that the questions chosen were the most relevant regarding the justification for going to war. They are the questions that a non-committed or neutral investigator would choose to ask. Furthermore, neither you NOR the author can demonstrate that the PBS/NPR audience would get those other four questions wrong by a higher percentage than Fox viewers.

Finally, let me observe that no causal relationship has been demonstrated here. This study in no way shows that the people who hold misperceptions received them from FOX News. The author of the op-ed himself admits that when he says, "Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed."

Ah, yes, one of your favorite tactics: selective quotation. The author raises the possibility of pre-sorting by ideology because he's going to demolish it in the next few sentences. I will reprint them here since you neglected to do so:

But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who watch PBS believed this to be the case.

I repeat: some conservatives DO watch PBS as their primary news source, just as many liberals get most of their news from CBS or CNN. This is not a question of liberals getting the facts right more often than conservatives, it is a question of the relative quality of different news outlets.

Do FOX viewers form their worldview solely from FOX? Nope. They read newspapers, magazines, discuss things with their buddies (who are usually pretty like-minded or they wouldn't be buddies), have drunken dialogues at bars with total strangers, etc.

The survey asked what the respondents' primary news source was. And your point can be applied to CBS, CNN, ABC, and PBS viewers as well: they also get their news from a variety of sources. The conclusion, then, must be that the variety of news sources that the PBS/NPR audience chooses is more reliable across the board.

To illustrate this even further, neither the author of the op-ed piece nor any poster to this forum has provided an instance of FOX News claiming:
1) the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
2) the weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
3) most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein.
Since Fox News never reported any of the three above, does it not stand to reason that the respondents got those misperceptions elsewhere? Note again that it was not merely the FOX viewers who held these views -- fully "sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge."


One can misinform through omission. For example, Fox can air some Bush administration official mentioning Saddam and al Qaeda in the same breath (which happened quite often) and then just let it pass without comment, whereas PBS will have some sort of roundtable discussion where journalists will discuss what evidence exists of a link between the two. Another thing that Fox does is report that some truck or lab or vial or something has been found and is undergoing analysis, but then they NEGLECT to broadcast a follow-up story making clear that it was just a false alarm. The same kind of lying by omission can apply to not broadcasting that people in other countries opposed the war.

Of course FOX will avoid broadcasting patent lies that they can be called on and possible sued over. So they lie by omission instead.

Finally, if a full 60% of respondents held one of those false beliefs, all that proves is that this notion of the "liberal" media is a myth. A truly liberal media would be pounding home those facts with such enthusastic energy and repetitiveness that NOBODY would be capable of thinking that weapons had been found or that a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda had been proven.

You claim the e-mail reprinted by Andrew Sullivan was nothing but excess verbiage. I say the post from Myerson was nothing more than excess verbiage. I don't know about you, but I didn't need to see that poll to know that right-leaning people tend to watch right-leaning news programs, and left-leaning people tend to watch left-leaning news programs. And of course, neither the Right nor the Left are free from their own misperceptions.

I repeat: many conservatives also watch PBS, because it gives in-depth coverage and patient analysis that commercial news media do not. I know there's no way that you'll accept that publicly-funded broadcasting can actually do a better job at some things than the flagship of an uber-Capitalist like Rupert Murdoch, but your misperceptions are not my concern.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Baby_Hitler]
    #2013079 - 10/15/03 10:24 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Baby_Hitler said:
The purpose of a news organization is to disseminate facts. We may therefore conclude that Fox either a) broadcasts incorrect information, b) broadcasts information with a distorted emphasis, or c) broadcasts correct information but their viewers either don't understand the English language or are too mentally incompetent to make sense of what is being said.


Sounds like you believe what you want to believe.




Sounds like you're incapable of constructing an actual argument.

Your "drive-by shooting" style of debate doesn't impress me very much.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2013318 - 10/15/03 11:38 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

I'll let InfidelGod handle the bulk of this since it is addressed to him, but there are a couple of things I can't let pass without comment:

By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few.

I've been to China, and I know for a fact that the Chinese people despise and mistrust the US government as much as they do their own. They dislike their own government but they do not see the US government as their friends at all. There is no way on earth that they would support an American invasion of another country.

The only population I can even remotely imagine supporting this war before it happened, other than the US, is Israel. Unless you can show me evidence that highly populous nations such as China, India, Russia, Indonesia, etc. actually supported this operation, it's a pretty safe assumption that most of the people of the world were against it.

Oh, please. This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE. This is not "staging", the way Michael Moore stages incidents in his mockumentaries, this is adding "sizzle to the steak". If there is no steak, you can't add sizzle to it no matter what your camera angles are.

Oh, I see. So the fact that a majority of producers uses this technique makes it okay. You're the last person I would have expected to see using this line of argument. Please explain why it is acceptable and okay to make a crowd look ten, twenty times larger than it actually is. Please explain why it is okay to "add sizzle to the steak." Please explain what was stopping the producers from giving us ONE, just ONE wide angle shot of the plaza that would have shown that it was NEARLY EMPTY. Please explain why it is okay to distort and misrepresent fact. And please don't say, "it's okay because everybody else does it."



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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2013332 - 10/15/03 11:41 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

I would say it was certaintly "staged" by those who only used shots that suggested a large crowd of people.

There's also the fact that several members of the crowd were the same people flown into Iraq by the US the week before the statue fell.


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OfflineGazzBut
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Xlea321]
    #2013621 - 10/16/03 01:56 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Yeah, that fact does kind of point to a little bit of stage management doesnt it? I wonder if they got them from Rent a rabble...


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OfflineBaby_Hitler
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2013697 - 10/16/03 02:53 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

I can't say I'm much impressed by your endless jibber-jabber of thousands of words that in the end fail to have any meaning.


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Baby_Hitler]
    #2014113 - 10/16/03 09:34 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

It's called debate baby. As opposed to your tiresome one-line posts that have no meaning whatsoever.


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OfflineBaby_Hitler
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Xlea321]
    #2014806 - 10/16/03 01:46 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Like that one?


More words plz.


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2015340 - 10/16/03 04:02 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

Given the great gap between Fox and PBS/NPR audiences (80% vs. 23% for one misconception; 45% versus merely 4% for all three), you're going to have a hard time convincing me without solid proof that there is ANY question of fact on which the PBS/NPR audience will perform worse overall than the Fox audience.

Without another poll, this is true. Unfortunately, I know of no way to convince someone to take a poll with the four example questions suggested by Sullivan's e-mail correspondent, so we'll never know, will we?

Fallacy of the unrepresentative sample. You assume that a subset of the PBS/NPR audience represents the whole audience.

Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions.

You may or may not know this, but a large portion of the PBS/NPR audience is made up of Republicans and other conservatives, generally of the New England/William F. Buckley mold.

And Libbies don't watch FOX News? Judging from the invective directed towards FOX by Libbies who frequent this forum, I would have to conclude that many do. Is it your contention that only mushroom-eating Libbies watch FOX News?

I was merely emphasizing the fact, and doing so admittedly with some glee, that the PBS/NPR audience (which, I reiterate, includes more than a small percentage of conservatives), according to all of the evidence presently available, holds certain incorrect beliefs by a far smaller percentage than Fox viewers.

And the point Sullivan's e-mail correspondent was making is that the numbers would be different if the polled group had been asked to comment on different incorrect beliefs.

And all I point out is that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear... and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance.

Ah. You see (adjectives aside), that is the exact point I was making. The point you were making was that --
Quote:

The purpose of a news organization is to disseminate facts. We may therefore conclude that Fox either a) broadcasts incorrect information, b) broadcasts information with a distorted emphasis, or c) broadcasts correct information but their viewers either don't understand the English language or are too mentally incompetent to make sense of what is being said.
I was simply trying to give Fox viewers the benefit of the doubt and therefore eliminated answer c), which only leaves a) and b) as possibilities.



Which is it?

The author of the op-ed piece in your first post of the thread claims (of FOX News): "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." What I am saying (and now you are saying also) is that the reverse is true -- the more you get things wrong, the more likely you are to watch (FOX News).

...and in fact encourages a mindset of blind acceptance.

I have never watched FOX News, so I am curious as to what specific techniques they use to get people to suspend belief, as opposed to the techniques used by other TV news shows. Do they emphasize certain words through their tone of voice? Do they use inappropriate facial expressions? Or do they tell only one side of the story, such as (for example) the network news shows which never mention the successes in Iraq, just the failures?

I have yet to see a nationwide poll of Iraq in which the sample is specifically chosen to be representative of the entire population.

And I have yet to see any poll, nationwide or otherwise, from China, the Ukraine, Israel, Uganda, Thailand, etc.

There are formulas that statisticians choose in order to make sure that even a sample of a thousand people is in fact representative, but such formulas are usable only when you can access just about anybody through their telephone.

Hmm. Whenever the pollsters bother to mention their methodology at all, the only thing they ever write is that it is a "random sample". If some kind of formula is in fact used to determine who is called and who is not, that is the furthest thing from "random" I can think of offhand. Either the pollsters are misrepresenting their methodology or you are. Whom shall I believe?

While it may be a while before a national survey of Iraq can be done, it is a fact that polls have been taken in the four most heavily-populated areas of Iraq. That's what we have to work with at the moment.

Until full services are restored and a truly scientific poll can be taken, the answer is undetermined.

How many people in China have telephones? When may I rely on a public opinion poll taken in China?

I was merely pointing out that the questions chosen were the most relevant regarding the justification for going to war. They are the questions that a non-committed or neutral investigator would choose to ask.

But you were arguing that the whole thing was about matters of fact, not pro-war or anti-war. If it is about fact, why must it be those three questions and no others? For that matter, why does it have to be about Iraq at all? Why couldn't there have been questions on other current events?

As for them being the questions that mattered to the exclusion of all others, that's nonsense. How about a question asking if Iraq was in breach of the ceasefire agreement? That was certainly one of the reasons given for going to war.

Furthermore, neither you NOR the author can demonstrate that the PBS/NPR audience would get those other four questions wrong by a higher percentage than Fox viewers.

Without a poll, no. I think it safe to say that no poll with those four questions will ever be asked.

Ah, yes, one of your favorite tactics: selective quotation. The author raises the possibility of pre-sorting by ideology because he's going to demolish it in the next few sentences. I will reprint them here since you neglected to do so:

I presumed that people had read your post, including the sentences following my cut and paste. If not, they could certainly re-read it. Nothing "selective" about it at all. Now let's examine the "demolition" the author performs --
Quote:

But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who watch PBS believed this to be the case.



They claim that people who say they will vote for Bush next election are "of like mind"? On what do they base this assumption? Since when does one's choice of presidential candidate determine one's state of mind? Some will vote for Bush because they always vote Republican. Some (like Luvdemshrooms) will vote for Bush because they can't stand the thought of a Harold Kucinich or a Howard Dean in the White House. Some will vote for Bush because they approved of his tax cuts. And some who say they will vote for Bush now will vote for someone else when they get inside the voting booth.

I repeat: some conservatives DO watch PBS as their primary news source, just as many liberals get most of their news from CBS or CNN. This is not a question of liberals getting the facts right more often than conservatives, it is a question of the relative quality of different news outlets.

Is it? I thought we had agreed that Fox, because of its sensationalism and over-the-top bias, attracts more people who are less apt to apply critical examination to what they hear.

The survey asked what the respondents' primary news source was. And your point can be applied to CBS, CNN, ABC, and PBS viewers as well: they also get their news from a variety of sources.

Agreed.

The conclusion, then, must be that the variety of news sources that the PBS/NPR audience chooses is more reliable across the board.

Agreed. How does that demonstrate a causal relationship between watching FOX News as your primary media source and holding incorrect notions?

Of course FOX will avoid broadcasting patent lies that they can be called on and possible sued over. So they lie by omission instead.

And this makes them different from the network news shows who omit positive news from Iraq in what way, exactly?

I know there's no way that you'll accept that publicly-funded broadcasting can actually do a better job at some things than the flagship of an uber-Capitalist like Rupert Murdoch, but your misperceptions are not my concern.

Where on earth did you pull that cheap shot out of? I have never watched FOX News. I have on occasion looked at the FOX News website, so keep your assumptions of my "misperceptions" to yourself.

I don't doubt that PBS has the possibility to do decent in-depth analyses of current events, but that is not what the poll was about, was it? It was about where people primarily get their NEWS -- not their commentary. For that matter, does PBS even DO a nightly news show?

I've been to China, and I know for a fact that the Chinese people despise and mistrust the US government as much as they do their own. They dislike their own government but they do not see the US government as their friends at all. There is no way on earth that they would support an American invasion of another country.

Sorry, but I'm afraid your speculation is not acceptable. It is you who insists we accept only statistically rigorous nationwide polls performed by telephone.

Unless you can show me evidence that highly populous nations such as China, India, Russia, Indonesia, etc. actually supported this operation, it's a pretty safe assumption that most of the people of the world were against it.

See above. Why are your assumptions unbacked by telephone polls to be assigned a greater weight than my assumptions? This whole thread is about facts and misperceptions of facts, not about your opinion of a "pretty safe assumption".

And it is not my place to provide you evidence, it is the place of the pollsters in Myerson's article to back their "fact" that such was the case. Burden of proof.

Oh, I see. So the fact that a majority of producers uses this technique makes it okay.

Nope. It means it wasn't staged. The action may have been recorded in a more dramatic way than would have seemed the case to one actually on the scene as it occurred, but the action took place nonetheless. It wasn't created by those filming it, it was merely recorded by them. We can discuss for pages and pages whether or not their recording of the event could have been handled differently, but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged.

Please explain why it is okay to "add sizzle to the steak." Please explain what was stopping the producers from giving us ONE, just ONE wide angle shot of the plaza that would have shown that it was NEARLY EMPTY. Please explain why it is okay to distort and misrepresent fact. And please don't say, "it's okay because everybody else does it."

*Shrugs* I never said it was okay. I merely pointed out that it is no different whatsoever from what happens at every demonstration I have ever attended. That's the way news segment producers handle these things -- ALL of them.

pinky


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2016859 - 10/17/03 12:50 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions.

Wrong. They do not just choose any old subset. See the following link on the polling methodology of ABC News, which is representative of most reputable polling bodies:
ABC News Polling Methodology

And Libbies don't watch FOX News? Judging from the invective directed towards FOX by Libbie

If they direct invective at it, it should be obvious that they watch it more out of morbid curiosity than as a source of information.

And the point Sullivan's e-mail correspondent was making is that the numbers would be different if the polled group had been asked to comment on different incorrect beliefs.
With nothing other than his opinion to back it up. You know the one about how opinions are like assholes, right?

Which is it?
The author of the op-ed piece in your first post of the thread claims (of FOX News): "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." What I am saying (and now you are saying also) is that the reverse is true -- the more you get things wrong, the more likely you are to watch (FOX News).


Why can't it be both? It seems to be more of a feedback loop than anything else. Guillible, uncritical people watch FOX News, FOX News broadcasts distorted news, guillible, biased people find their misperceptions subtly or overtly reinforced by a news organization that uses the laughably incorrect slogan "fair and balanced" and tune in in larger numbers, thereby encouraging FOX news to continue using that formula, and so on.

I have never watched FOX News, so I am curious as to what specific techniques they use to get people to suspend belief, as opposed to the techniques used by other TV news shows. Do they emphasize certain words through their tone of voice? Do they use inappropriate facial expressions? Or do they tell only one side of the story, such as (for example) the network news shows which never mention the successes in Iraq, just the failures?

They do all of the above, in addition to draping themselves in populist "patriotism".

Hmm. Whenever the pollsters bother to mention their methodology at all, the only thing they ever write is that it is a "random sample". If some kind of formula is in fact used to determine who is called and who is not, that is the furthest thing from "random" I can think of offhand. Either the pollsters are misrepresenting their methodology or you are. Whom shall I believe?
While it may be a while before a national survey of Iraq can be done, it is a fact that polls have been taken in the four most heavily-populated areas of Iraq. That's what we have to work with at the moment.


Maybe if you bothered to look, you would see that pollsters often explain their methodology in great detail. I refer you once again to the ABC News link, and to the various steps that they take to ensure that the polled sample is relatively representative in terms of region, age, sex, race, education, and income. The methodologies of the polls conducted in Iraq do not even come close to the rigor of the methods used on a daily basis in the United States.

They claim that people who say they will vote for Bush next election are "of like mind"? On what do they base this assumption? Since when does one's choice of presidential candidate determine one's state of mind? Some will vote for Bush because they always vote Republican. Some (like Luvdemshrooms) will vote for Bush because they can't stand the thought of a Harold Kucinich or a Howard Dean in the White House. Some will vote for Bush because they approved of his tax cuts. And some who say they will vote for Bush now will vote for someone else when they get inside the voting booth.


They may not be of like mind on every single particular, but they are more of like mind than somebody who is going to vote for Kerry, Clark, or Dean. Just as you and luvdemshrooms are more of like mind with one another than either of you is with me, even though you are not of exactly the same mind. These are rough approximations to be sure, but are generally more useful than paralyzing hair-splitting.

And this makes them different from the network news shows who omit positive news from Iraq in what way, exactly?

Please tell me what positive news from Iraq the networks of have omitted. What, that the electricity is up and running? That was on the networks. What else?

Agreed. How does that demonstrate a causal relationship between watching FOX News as your primary media source and holding incorrect notions?

Does it prove a definitive causal link? No. Is it highly suggestive of a causal link? Yes. I refer you again to the original article:

"Misperceptions can also be the result of inattention, of course. If you nod off for just a nanosecond in the middle of Tom Brokaw intoning, "U.S. inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction today," you could think we'd just uncovered Hussein's nuclear arsenal. So the wily researchers also controlled for intensity of viewership, and concluded that, "in the case of those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly increases the likelihood of misperceptions." Particularly when that news includes hyping every false lead in Iraq as the certain prelude to uncovering a massive WMD cache."

In other words, the MORE attention that FOX viewers paid to FOX news, the MORE likely they were to get the facts wrong. Not defitive proof, but still highly suggestive of a direct causal relationship.

I don't doubt that PBS has the possibility to do decent in-depth analyses of current events, but that is not what the poll was about, was it? It was about where people primarily get their NEWS -- not their commentary. For that matter, does PBS even DO a nightly news show?

Yes, the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.

Sorry, but I'm afraid your speculation is not acceptable. It is you who insists we accept only statistically rigorous nationwide polls performed by telephone.


Fair enough. However, I have yet to see a rigorous poll from any country other than the US showing that the majority of the population supported the war. Without even a single other country leaning in that direction, to suggest that the majority of the world supported the war is not only unacceptable, it is being willfully wrong.

Nope. It means it wasn't staged. The action may have been recorded in a more dramatic way than would have seemed the case to one actually on the scene as it occurred, but the action took place nonetheless. It wasn't created by those filming it, it was merely recorded by them. We can discuss for pages and pages whether or not their recording of the event could have been handled differently, but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged.


I never said it was staged. I said it was misrepresented and distorted. And I'm absolutely correct in saying so.

*Shrugs* I never said it was okay. I merely pointed out that it is no different whatsoever from what happens at every demonstration I have ever attended. That's the way news segment producers handle these things -- ALL of them.

OK, there you go with the semantic gymnastics again. Yes, you never used the word "okay", but the entire thrust of your argument was that it WAS okay. And no, you are absolutely wrong: ALL news segment producers do NOT handle these things that way. The footage shown in many countries outside of the US showed the entire plaza. And even if they ALL handled things that way, so what? What does that prove? It was distortion, misrepresentation, and lying by omission. It was and is indefensible whenever and wherever it is done. End of story.







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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2019417 - 10/17/03 11:18 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

You know the one about how opinions are like assholes, right?

And what is your opinion on the likely results of a properly-conducted poll in China regarding the deposing by force of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq?

The e-mail writer's contention is that certain commonly-held misperceptions are not equally distributed throughout the populace as a whole. Joe Sixpack's personal prejudices determine the likelihood that he might recognize proposition A as a falsehood, but think proposition B was true. Yet Bob Student, with an entirely different set of personal prejudices, might accept A as true and recognize B as false. You and I might recognize both A and B as false, while Conrad Conspiracy Theorist might accept both A and B as true.

In essence, the e-mail writer points out the obvious -- one's personal prejudices (or prejudgments or predilections or whatever term you feel comfortable with) influence quite a few things in one's life, not excluding the choice of literature one reads or the kind of news program one watches.

You appear to believe that the e-mail writer's contention is incorrect. I believe it is correct. Nothing either of us can say will convince the other to change his mind. If the polling organization ever gets around to repeating the poll with a different set of questions, we'll know for sure, won't we?

Guillible, uncritical people watch FOX News, FOX News broadcasts distorted news...

Is it your opinion that FOX News broadcasts distorted news?

They do all of the above, in addition to draping themselves in populist "patriotism".

And this makes them different from Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw or Connie Chung how, exactly?

Maybe if you bothered to look, you would see that pollsters often explain their methodology in great detail. I refer you once again to the ABC News link, and to the various steps that they take to ensure that the polled sample is relatively representative in terms of region, age, sex, race, education, and income.

Very interesting link. So in fact, despite the brief disclaimer sometimes included in the poll results, there is really nothing random about the surveys at all. That thousand people is broken down into dozens of subgroups, then weighted 75-25 for sex, then the results are massaged according to some unspecified algorithm. I can see now why they don't bother to include that entire disclaimer at the end of each report -- it would be longer than the report itself and hardly anyone would read it anyway.

Yes, you never used the word "okay", but the entire thrust of your argument was that it WAS okay.

Nope. The entire thrust of my argument was that it wasn't staged. It wasn't. The event happened.

ALL news segment producers do NOT handle these things that way. The footage shown in many countries outside of the US showed the entire plaza.

Sorry. I should have made it clear that I had only attended demonstrations in Canada (and one in the US). I have no idea how news segment producers outside of North America handle it, since I have no direct experience there.

pinky


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2019644 - 10/18/03 12:58 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

For example, is each presented as a "true" or "false" decision, or is it phrased as "Is it your opinion that...."? The answers will be different depending on the phrasing

so you're saying that if the FOX news viewers had answered that "it is my opinion that WMD has been found in Iraq", somehow that would make them correct in expressing their opinion? I'm sorry, those questions are pretty specific and deal with facts. no room for opinions in those questions, unlike the questions from the emailer.

all three can be answered with a simple true or false. (yes, even the third one)

As can the four supplied by the e-mail writer, and numerous others which would serve the same purpose


wrong. those four questions cannot be answered with a true or false. if you want to try it go ahead. try this one: Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion? give me a true or false and no bullshit polls.

By the way, by what method do we know the degree of opposition to the war of all 180 countries on the planet? I don't recall seeing any numbers from polls in China, the most populous nation on the planet, for example. Nor do I recall seeing any from Israel, or the Ukraine, or Bangladesh, or Chile, or South Africa or Thailand, to name just a few.

you're saying that unless we get poll results from every country in the world, we can't know for certain that most of the world didn't support the invasion of Iraq? you're really stretching here. everyone knows that most of the world was against it. it's not some huge misperception. it's fact. the UN was against it. even in the countries that supported the war, there were many people against it.

Oh, please. He never made the claim. He in fact made the opposite claim -- that the time to act is before the threat becomes imminent. This is not open to debate. It can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no"

yes, we all read what he said in the State of the Union address. he also said that Iraq could have a nuke in six months and a bunch of other quotes that suggested that Iraq was an imminent threat. now if the question was "Did President Bush specifically say before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?" then THAT would be answerable with a yes or no and I'm sure that many people, including FOX news viewers, would get this one wrong. but my point was that it is debateable whether or not Bush made the claim that Iraq was an imminent threat.

let's apply the same standards to the three questions in the survey, shall we? For example

you're hardly applying the "same standards". I raised my doubts about those four questions based on what any reasonable person would think. a reasonable person would not think that Iraq had a "close working relationship" with al qaida based on the laughable evidence you give:

It is a known fact that documents were discovered in one of the Baghdad ministries (by a reporter from the Toronto Star) which outline plans to invite bin Laden himself for discussions with Iraq's head honchos

oh my god! they found a document that "outlined plans" to invite bin Laden! yeah they must have been real close. btw, do you know about the connections bin Laden had with the US government in his mujahadeen days?

It is a known fact that al Qaeda members were in Iraq, as were other terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abua Abbas

this "evidence" is really getting ridiculous. it is also a known fact that al qaida members were in the US. does this mean that the US had a close working relationship with al qaida?

I'm sorry man but those three questions are not open to this kind of interpretation. you either get it right or you get it wrong. unlike the four questions posed by the emailer, which can be debated.

Oh, please. You have read the article -- people were shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds. This was so unusual an occurence to the pollsters that they saw fit to emphasize it.

I don't think that the words of those "shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds" are representative of the country as a whole. do you? I don't think any poll taken in Iraq now can be considered accurate, and so the question: "Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?" is meaningless. it's just that the emailer seems so sure that there is a "right" answer to this question. clearly you can see that a question like this cannot possibly have the kind of clear answer that you can get with the three questions asked in the original poll.

And you can't seriously pretend to believe that people are less likely to give honest answers to a Gallup pollster today than they were while the Ba'athists were in power.

huh? I said no such thing. I only said that an accurate poll is not possible right now.

Not open to debate. We are talking "quantities", here. The US sold almost none.

lol. so you're saying that because we didn't sell a massive "quantity" of anthrax that it's not significant? the question was "Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?" and as Colin Powell pointed out at his speech at the UN, a small amount of anthrax is a "significant amount". we're not comparing weapons pound for pound here. and besides, I don't think the average PBS viewer would get this one "wrong" either way.

As for selling anthrax cultures, anthrax was less "significant" than any other weapon Iraq possessed, wasn't it, since Hussein never used any before allegedly destroying whatever he once had

I don't get what you're saying here. are you saying that because Hussein never used the anthrax, it wasn't significant? it doesn't really matter anyway. I'm not saying that the US sold a significant amount of weapons. again, all I'm saying is that the question of whether the US sold significant amounts of arms is open to debate, as are the other questions posed by the emailer.

This is a standard technique used by just about every news segment producer in the world -- camera angles to maximize crowd size. I myself have participated in demonstrations that looked a LOT larger on camera than they were in real life. I know because I was THERE

so what's your point? it's not staged because everyone else does it too? that's pretty weak.

Not to point out the obvious, but that's precisely what polls do. They claim a subset of a thousand people accurately reflects the opinions of tens or even hundreds of millions.

not to point out the obvious, but polls by definition take a representative sample, NOT a subset. it would be ridiculous to take a poll of a "subset" to gauge the whole. taking a poll of the subset of liberals who do mushrooms wouldn't exactly give us an accurate result.

I have never watched FOX News

wait a minute, you've never watched FOX news?? so you must really know what you're talking about. how can you know if its biased or not? I don't know if you're really in touch with the average FOX news viewer, but they're an intellectually unimpressive lot and it really isn't surprising that they're also the most misinformed. I doubt you'd be defending FOX news if you actually watched it once in a while.

but that doesn't change the fact that the event happened -- it wasn't staged.

no one is saying that the event never happened. is your definition of "staged" something that didn't happen and was computer generated or something of that sort? according to Websters:

2stage (v):
1 : to produce (as a play) on a stage
2 : to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect

seems to fit the description. but again, all I'm saying is that it's debatable (reasonably) whether or not it was staged. the emailer might have a point about people holding different views having different misperceptions. but he sure chose some poor examples to try to prove his point that PBS viewers are as misinformed as FOX news viewers. I have no doubt that liberals have some misperceptions of their own, but I'd bet that it's nowhere near as bad as those held by FOX news viewers. you should really watch FOX news sometime. if you're somewhat media savvy, you'll see right through the BS, and you'll understand why those who get their news from FOX are the most misinformed.




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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2019768 - 10/18/03 02:04 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

In essence, the e-mail writer points out the obvious -- one's personal prejudices (or prejudgments or predilections or whatever term you feel comfortable with) influence quite a few things in one's life, not excluding the choice of literature one reads or the kind of news program one watches.

The statement as given above is reasonable. That's not, however, how the e-mail writer put it. He tried to contend that there was parity or equality in terms of the misinformation held to be true by Fox viewers and PBS viewers. The evidence so far indicates that there is a very lopsided disparity, with the Fox viewers significantly more misinformed than PBS viewers. If you and the e-mail author think this is because the study designers are part of some liberal cabal (he certainly does; I don't know about you), then I suggest you write to them directly and share your concerns, urging them to design a test that asks a broader range of questions.

Is it your opinion that FOX News broadcasts distorted news?

Those who pay closest attention to Fox News are the most misinformed. For me to believe they distort the news is more than a mere opinion: at least I have something, even though it is not definitive proof, to back it up, whereas the e-mail author has absolutely nothing.

And this makes them different from Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw or Connie Chung how, exactly?

Well, for starters, none of those three people actually said on the air after the fall of Baghdad: "Those of you who opposed the war were wrong then, and you're despicable now" or something along those lines, which is what one Fox anchor said.

Very interesting link. So in fact, despite the brief disclaimer sometimes included in the poll results, there is really nothing random about the surveys at all. That thousand people is broken down into dozens of subgroups, then weighted 75-25 for sex, then the results are massaged according to some unspecified algorithm. I can see now why they don't bother to include that entire disclaimer at the end of each report -- it would be longer than the report itself and hardly anyone would read it anyway.

They are random insofar as they don't have some guy or group of people deciding whom to call and thereby skewing the results. The population is broken down into segments and numbers are randomly dialed; the results of that random selection are then weighted to make the results more representative.

Nope. The entire thrust of my argument was that it wasn't staged. It wasn't. The event happened.

If that was the thrust, you certainly expended a larger number of words trying to make misrepresentation seem normal and acceptable.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2019790 - 10/18/03 02:23 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Here is the exact quote, from a Fox anchor named Neil Cavuto, in a statement addressed to the French, Germans, Russians and "all those who opposed the liberation of Iraq":

" Now you want in.

When for so long the masses have been kept out.

You are as crass as you are cunning.

As phony as you are pathetic.

I ask you to look at their faces.

Then look at your own.

See the triumph of the human spirit and the coalition soldiers who fought and died for it.

Then your own pathetic selves, who even now can't come close to appreciating it. Or even understanding it.

You were sickening then. You're sickening now. "

Fox News

This is the level of discourse on Fox News. And you wonder why their viewers fuck up the facts?


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Offlinemonoamine
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2021709 - 10/18/03 11:37 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

I think Fox is distorted just because of all the goofy ass comments they make after reporting a story. Just report the godamn thing and STFU-I'll form my own opinions on the matter. No other news outlet does this as blatantly as Fox.

It's all about the tone. Even if there was a mainstream liberal news source that did this I would be saying the same thing.


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2022721 - 10/19/03 01:33 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

infidelGOD writes:

so you're saying that if the FOX news viewers had answered that "it is my opinion that WMD has been found in Iraq", somehow that would make them correct in expressing their opinion? I'm sorry, those questions are pretty specific and deal with facts. no room for opinions in those questions, unlike the questions from the emailer.

No, I'm saying that unless we know the exact phrasing of the questions, the conclusions we draw may not be correct. For example, Myerson doesn't put quotes around the questions, so for all we know he is paraphrasing the actual questions asked. And yes, the precise wording of the questions is critical -- read the pollster methodology link EchoVortex provided.

wrong. those four questions cannot be answered with a true or false. if you want to try it go ahead.

I already did. Re-read my post.

try this one: Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion? give me a true or false and no bullshit polls.

Yes they do. All polls taken to date in Iraq show that.

As for "bullshit polls", please provide for us polls (bullshit or otherwise) showing the majority of Israelis, Chileans, Thais, Ugandans, Chinese, etc. opposed the invasion. You claim that one of the original questions, "do most people in 'other countries' oppose the invasion" can be answered true or false with no empirical evidence available to support the answer, yet you say the same question asked of Iraqis cannot? Be objective, dude -- if you are going to apply conditions, apply them equally.

And again, I must point out the abominable phrasing of that question -- if in fact Myerson has given us the correct phrasing.

you're saying that unless we get poll results from every country in the world, we can't know for certain that most of the world didn't support the invasion of Iraq? you're really stretching here.

You're saying that unless we get properly run telephone polls from Iraq, we must reject the polls we do have, and can't know for certain that most Iraqis don't support the invasion of Iraq? You're really stretching here.

everyone knows that most of the world was against it.

Actually, "everyone" knows no such thing. Many people hold that opinion without any evidence that meets your standards or EchoVortex's standards. If "bullshit polls" are to be rejected, is it not logical that "no polls at all" should also be rejected? You can't have it both ways.

it's not some huge misperception. it's fact.

No, it is not "fact", according to the standards you insist on setting for the same question restricted to Iraqis. See above.

the UN was against it.

Since no resolution following 1441 was ever put to a vote, we don't even know that the majority of the UN Security Council was against it, let alone the UN as a body.

even in the countries that supported the war, there were many people against it.

Finally, you state something that is verifiably factual. Congratulations.

yes, we all read what he said in the State of the Union address.

Then you know that his argument was always to act before the threat became imminent.

you're hardly applying the "same standards". I raised my doubts about those four questions based on what any reasonable person would think. a reasonable person would not think that Iraq had a "close working relationship" with al qaida based on the laughable evidence you give:

You missed the point entirely. I was pointing out that people don't always listen or read carefully -- sometimes they "skim" information. There has been evidence presented that al-Qaeda operatives had contact and relationships with various Iraqi Ba'athists. Does the evidence at this time indicate a "close working" relationship? In my opinion, no. But there was definitely some relationship.

I'm sorry man but those three questions are not open to this kind of interpretation. you either get it right or you get it wrong. unlike the four questions posed by the emailer, which can be debated.

You are letting your prejudice show. All seven questions are open to interpretation, depending on how they are phrased. You are setting different standards for the ones you like than the ones you don't. Try to step back and look at all seven questions objectively.

I don't think that the words of those "shoving their way towards the pollsters in order to speak their minds" are representative of the country as a whole. do you?

Why not? It can't have escaped your attention that a very significant number of those doing the shoving had some very uncomplimentary opinions about the US involvement. They weren't anxious to praise the US, they were anxious to finally get their own opinions recorded, no matter what those opinions might be.

I don't think any poll taken in Iraq now can be considered accurate, and so the question: "Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?" is meaningless.

And I submit that an imperfect poll has more informational value than no poll at all, as is the case with Uganda, China, Thailand and the vast majority of the 180 countries in the world. You hold the opposite view. Let's leave it to the readers to decide whose view is the more valid.

so you're saying that because we didn't sell a massive "quantity" of anthrax that it's not significant?

Compared to the thousands of tons of munitions sold by China, Russia, France and others -- munitions that were actually used, it was not a significant amount, whether measured in tonnage, by dollar amount, by percentage of Iraq's weaponry arsenal, by kill potential, or by percentage of actual use.

so what's your point? it's not staged because everyone else does it too? that's pretty weak.

The point was, that the event was not staged. The event happened, and would have happened whether Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Moore, embedded videographers, or no one at all had filmed it.

wait a minute, you've never watched FOX news?? so you must really know what you're talking about. how can you know if its biased or not?

I cannot know if FOX News's televised newscasts present inaccurate or incomplete information or not. I do however know enough about causality to know that a truly random poll of TV viewers using those three questions and no others cannot prove that the misperceptions held by those answering the questions are the direct result of the news programs they watch -- regardless of which shows those might be. Any sociology prof worth his salt would raise exactly the same points I have here. The methodology of the poll is flawed if the purpose of the poll was to find out which news shows are the least accurate.

I don't know if you're really in touch with the average FOX news viewer, but they're an intellectually unimpressive lot and it really isn't surprising that they're also the most misinformed.

If true, that is exactly my point -- and now also EchoVortex's point. The less intellectually curious or critical you are, the more likely you are to watch shows that challenge your own mindset least. I'll go further and say that this extends even to those who are curious and critical. I doubt, for example, that you spend much time reading op-ed pieces from the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, or National Review when compared to the amount of time you spend reading op-ed pieces from more liberal sources.

I doubt you'd be defending FOX news if you actually watched it once in a while.

I am not "defending" FOX News -- I am merely pointing out the obvious; the same thing the e-mail writer points out. Virtually everyone holds misperceptions, and in a very large number of cases the misperceptions one holds are subconsciously "willful" misperceptions -- i.e. if one is a "pacifist", one tends to hold a certain set of misperceptions that a "warmonger" would not, and vice versa.

Be honest, now. Could you not devise a group of questions on current affairs that would target a particular mindset? Of course you could. And note that the e-mail writer doesn't even say that the three questions chosen were deliberately chosen to prove a particular point -- he merely points out correctly that they all have a commonality.

Look, here's the most important point of all, one we must resolve before proceeding with further discussion -- not only do we not know the exact phrasing of the questions, we don't even know that there were only three questions asked. What if there were ten asked and Myerson is reporting on only three? As a matter of fact, the more I re-read Myerson's post, the more apparent it becomes that his reports of the questions are in fact paraphrases. Not only that, but I find it passing strange that "Researchers from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint project of several academic centers, some of them based at the University of Maryland) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm, have spent the better part of the year tracking the public's misperceptions of major news events and polling people to find out just where they go to get things so balled up.

"In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered.... (snip)"

Okay, here we have a joint project of several academic centers spending more than six months of effort (how can that be correct unless there were polls taken before May, by the way?) tracking misperceptions of "major news events" in a series of polls. Sounds like a pretty thorough project. And clearly if they covered major news events there were more than three questions asked. Yet the only three questions Myerson comments on happen to deal with the Iraq invasion. Hmmmm. Could it be that there were in fact more than three questions about Iraq in those multiple surveys? Could it be that the answers to those other questions show the PBS/NPR crowd in a worse light? And what about the other "major news events"? How well did the PBS/NPR crowd do on those? Was the data on these other events not made available to Myerson? Why not?

I repeat -- Myerson's article is nothing more than excess verbiage if taken out of context. Let's see the entire series of surveys, including the exact phrasing of every question asked in every poll in the series, before either of us spend any more time spinning our wheels, okay?

no one is saying that the event never happened. is your definition of "staged" something that didn't happen and was computer generated or something of that sort? according to Websters:

2stage (v):
1 : to produce (as a play) on a stage
2 : to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect


The filmers of the event didn't "produce or cause to happen" the event. They recorded it. Some recorded it differently than others, as EchoVortex points out. But neither those who used tight closeups nor those who used wide panoramas caused the event to happen. Nobody "staged" it -- it happened, and would have happened whether there was any film in the cameras or not, whether the segment producers edited it one way or the other, or even if they had chosen never to broadcast the footage at all. I don't know how much plainer I can make this. I am not defending the way it was edited, or defending whatever commentary may have been added in voice-over; I am merely saying the event was not "staged". It wasn't.

the emailer might have a point about people holding different views having different misperceptions. but he sure chose some poor examples to try to prove his point that PBS viewers are as misinformed as FOX news viewers.

Perhaps he did. But if those questions had been included in the poll, do you honestly and objectively believe that no more than 23% of the PBS/NPR group would have answered them incorrectly? And that no less than 80% of the FOX viewers would have answered them incorrectly? Be honest with us, now. You seem to have a pretty firm opinion of the mindest of the average FOX viewer -- can you see the numbers being identical for those four questions?

I have no doubt that liberals have some misperceptions of their own, but I'd bet that it's nowhere near as bad as those held by FOX news viewers.

Then let me say the same thing to you that EchoVortex said to me -- provide proof.

you should really watch FOX news sometime.

I haven't had a television in sixteen years, and when I do visit my parents in Canada, their cable package doesn't include FOX News. They do have CNN, however.

But, just in the last couple of days I started doing some comparisons of CNN internet coverage of world events vs FOX internet coverage of the same events. This was an unintentional thing prompted by Baby_Hitler's posting of some CNN links and a FOX link. These days I seldom visit either site on my own. It is clearly far too early to draw any conclusions from my admittedly meager sampling efforts to date, but it has been my impression so far that the information provided by the FOX internet site is very noticeably more complete and detailed than that provided by the CNN internet site. I realize that this has no relevance to their TELEVISION coverage, and it may be that CNN just doesn't want to pay for as much net bandwidth as FOX is willing to, or maybe CNN deliberately skimps on the detail on their internet site in an effort to "tease" people into watching their television site where they make money from commercials.

I do believe I'll keep the experiment going for a while longer, though.

pinky


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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2022844 - 10/19/03 02:29 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Nicely done pinky.


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2022996 - 10/19/03 03:39 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

try this one: Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion? give me a true or false and no bullshit polls.

Yes they do. All polls taken to date in Iraq show that.


really? do you know the exact phrasing of the questions? remember this from you: "unless we know the exact phrasing of the questions, the conclusions we draw may not be correct"? how can we trust these polls taken in Iraq? do you know the exact polling methodology and the exact phrasing of the words? according to you, if we don't know these things, the results may not be correct so how can you expect me to trust them?

You claim that one of the original questions, "do most people in 'other countries' oppose the invasion" can be answered true or false with no empirical evidence available to support the answer

polls have been taken in other coutries that showed massive opposition to the war so there is empirical evidence out there. I can search and post some of them but it won't be good enough for you because I don't have the results from every country in the world. oh well.

You're saying that unless we get properly run telephone polls from Iraq, we must reject the polls we do have, and can't know for certain that most Iraqis don't support the invasion of Iraq?

no. I'm saying that polls taken in a war zone might not be the most accurate. but you seem to have no trouble swallowing them, even taking them as fact (regarding the emailer's question) while ignoring the obvious fact that the majority of the world was against the invasion.

Actually, "everyone" knows no such thing. Many people hold that opinion without any evidence that meets your standards or EchoVortex's standards. If "bullshit polls" are to be rejected, is it not logical that "no polls at all" should also be rejected? You can't have it both ways.

actually everyone does know it. even the neocons on this board know that most of the world was opposed to the war. and there are polls out there, a lot more scientific than the polls taken of Iraqis "shoving their way towards the pollsters". and I think the fact that the UN was against it can be taken as evidence that the majority of the world was against it.

Since no resolution following 1441 was ever put to a vote, we don't even know that the majority of the UN Security Council was against it, let alone the UN as a body.

I didn't expect to see this kind of reasoning from you. why do you suppose the resolution sought by the US after 1441 never came to a vote? it couldn't be because there wasn't enough support for it?

You are letting your prejudice show. All seven questions are open to interpretation, depending on how they are phrased. You are setting different standards for the ones you like than the ones you don't. Try to step back and look at all seven questions objectively.

yes lets look at them objectively. these questions aren't in the same category. one set of questions simply leaves no room for any interpretation. the other set of questions can be reasonably debated. surely you can see the difference here. I'm not applying different standards. I'm just using common sense. do you really think that a PBS viewer who believes that the statue scene was staged is as "wrong" as a FOX news viewer who believes that we found WMD in Iraq? or someone believing that the majority of Iraqis opposed the invasion is as "wrong" as someone who believes that Iraq had a close working relationship with al qaida?

Why not? It can't have escaped your attention that a very significant number of those doing the shoving had some very uncomplimentary opinions about the US involvement. They weren't anxious to praise the US, they were anxious to finally get their own opinions recorded, no matter what those opinions might be.

regardless of what they said, people who are eager to be polled can't be taken as an accurate representation of the whole.

Compared to the thousands of tons of munitions sold by China, Russia, France and others -- munitions that were actually used, it was not a significant amount, whether measured in tonnage, by dollar amount, by percentage of Iraq's weaponry arsenal, by kill potential, or by percentage of actual use.

so if North Korea had sold Iraq a nuclear bomb, but Iraq never used it, you wouldn't consider the sale a "significant amount" compared to the munitions sold by others? now you're setting the condition that it actually has to be used for it to be significant? what exactly is your point? the US did sell some antrax cultures and other precursors to biological weapons to Iraq. all I'm saying is that it can be considered a sale of a significant amount of arms and therefor the question that the emailer asks doesn't have a clear cut answer.

The point was, that the event was not staged. The event happened, and would have happened whether Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Moore, embedded videographers, or no one at all had filmed it.

are you intentionally missing my point here or what? again I say: no one is saying that the event never happened. your definition of staged seems to be: something that didn't happen. I think the definition: "to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect" applies here. here are some synomyms of "staged": theatrical, artificial, unreal. yes the event happened. but the version that was fed to the public was a "staged" version. get it now? they made it appear that it was some kind of spontaneous act by thousands of Iraqis to topple the statue. it wasn't. yes the event happened, but the version that we got was a staged, theatrical farce.

Okay, here we have a joint project of several academic centers spending more than six months of effort (how can that be correct unless there were polls taken before May, by the way?) tracking misperceptions of "major news events" in a series of polls. Sounds like a pretty thorough project. And clearly if they covered major news events there were more than three questions asked. Yet the only three questions Myerson comments on happen to deal with the Iraq invasion. Hmmmm. Could it be that there were in fact more than three questions about Iraq in those multiple surveys? Could it be that the answers to those other questions show the PBS/NPR crowd in a worse light? And what about the other "major news events"? How well did the PBS/NPR crowd do on those? Was the data on these other events not made available to Myerson? Why not?

gee, just a while ago, you were saying to me: "A lot of what you raise is useless speculation anyway"

The less intellectually curious or critical you are, the more likely you are to watch shows that challenge your own mindset least

yes exactly. and doesn't it follow that they are also more likely to be furthur misinformed by the biased news that they watch? it appears you agree somewhat with the original article. you don't attempt to show that FOX news viewers are NOT misinformed. you only try to make it appear normal by saying that the PBS/NPR audience is equally as misinformed, of which you have no proof whatsoever except a few questions from an emailer which don't really hold up.

I doubt, for example, that you spend much time reading op-ed pieces from the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, or National Review when compared to the amount of time you spend reading op-ed pieces from more liberal sources

actually, I do read the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek magazine and National Review and I even watch FOX news sometimes (for laughs). and I also read op-ed pieces from so called "liberal sources" like TIME magazine, the Washington Post, NY Times and LA Times. and having seen bias on both sides, I can unequivacally say that FOX news is by far the most biased major news organization in the US.

I am not "defending" FOX News

oh you're not?

I am merely pointing out the obvious; the same thing the e-mail writer points out. Virtually everyone holds misperceptions

as I already said, I agree that everyone hold misperceptions based on their beliefs. what the original article is saying and what I'm saying is that the average FOX news viewer is more likely to hold these misperceptions than anyone else. either because FOX news misinforms them or because misinformed people watch FOX news. let's set this ridiculous argument of causality aside for a minute because it's impossible to prove either way. the fact remains that FOX news viewers are more misinformed.

I have no doubt that liberals have some misperceptions of their own, but I'd bet that it's nowhere near as bad as those held by FOX news viewers.

Then let me say the same thing to you that EchoVortex said to me -- provide proof.


read the original article. FOX news viewers are misinformed. you never really disputed this. you (or actually the emailer) just tried to say that PBS/NPR viewers were equally as misinformed based on hypothetical polls of some rather poor questions. if you agree with the emailer, I think it's up to you to provide proof that the PBS/NPR audience is as misinformed as FOX news viewers.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2024240 - 10/19/03 11:39 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

People in India, the second most populous nation in the world, overwhelming opposed the war:

Link

Here is a link to the Pew Global Attitudes project:

Pew Global Attitudes Project

Although the question "were/are you in favor or opposed to the war in Iraq" was not asked, this poll suggests that 74% of Indonesians and significant numbers of people in other countries (including Kuwait!) are worried about a potential US military threat.

Here is a quotation from the report summary:

"In Western Europe, negative views of America have declined somewhat since just prior to the war in Iraq, when anti-war sentiment peaked. But since last summer, favorable opinions of the U.S have slipped in nearly every country for which trend measures are available. Views of the American people, while still largely favorable, have fallen as well. The belief that the U.S. pursues a unilateralist foreign policy, which had been extensive last summer, has only grown in the war's aftermath."

Also: "In addition, the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world. Negative views of the U.S. among Muslims, which had been largely limited to countries in the Middle East, have spread to Muslim populations in Indonesia and Nigeria. Since last summer, favorable ratings for the U.S. have fallen from 61% to 15% in Indonesia and from 71% to 38% among Muslims in Nigeria."

We already know that pulic opinion in Europe, both western and eastern, was solidly against the war. Here is another link just in case: BBC News

The war was also opposed in Japan: Link

You may also want to look at the Gallup International polls, which may found here: Gallup International
(it is not possible to link directly to the results, but if you navigate the "Survey Archive" it should be easy enough to find.

The pre-war Gallup international polls showed that large percentages of the public all over the world were against the war under any circumstances, while many would support the war only with explicit UN sanction and approval. The percentage who supported the US and its allies acting unilateraly (which is what happened) was in the single digits in most countries, and never rose above about 20% anywhere else. Opposition to the war was especially strong in Argentina, and quite high throughout Latin America.

The post-war polls showed a slight flip-flop in some countries (such as Australia and New Zealand), but the large majority of the countries surveyed still believed even after the war that military action was not justified.

So there you have it: common people in Europe, Russia, India, all of the Islamic world, Latin America, Japan, much of Africa--all were, and still are, opposed to the war. The only real question mark is China (Hong Kong, by the way, was against war), but even if we were perversely to assume that the Chinese people supported this war, that still wouldn't be enough to tip the balance of overall world opinion in favor.

If you still wish to entertain this delusional fantasy that a sliver of hope or evidence exists that the majority of the world's people actually supported the US coalition war, be my guest. You could still argue, I suppose, that none of these polls constitutes definitive proof and that you know better, but that would be like going out without an umbrella when all the meteorologists forecast rain and the thunderheads are piling up on the horizon.


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2024363 - 10/20/03 12:18 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

infidelGOD writes:

how can we trust these polls taken in Iraq? do you know the exact polling methodology and the exact phrasing of the words? according to you, if we don't know these things, the results may not be correct so how can you expect me to trust them?

That cuts both ways. We don't know the exact phrasing of the questions (or even the number of questions) asked in the survey mentioned by Myerson, yet you have no difficulty accepting that they "prove" FOX News is distorted. You don't even know that there were polls taken at all in the countries I mention, yet you have no difficulty claiming the non-existent polls "prove" the "rest of the world" disapproves of the invasion. You can't have it both ways, dude. If it is correct for you to say it is a fact that the rest of the world disapproved -- with no poll results (incomplete or otherwise) at all to back you up -- then using the exact same standards as you, it is correct to say the Iraqis approved.

polls have been taken in other coutries that showed massive opposition to the war so there is empirical evidence out there. I can search and post some of them but it won't be good enough for you because I don't have the results from every country in the world. oh well.

Not just not good enough for me, not good enough for anyone. Look, you are the one claiming that this particular question of the original three can be answered as fact -- if no standards are used to verify the fact. Yet you claim the question about Iraqis' approval cannot be answered as fact if the same standards (or more accurately lack of standards) are applied. You can't have it both ways.

I'm saying that polls taken in a war zone might not be the most accurate. but you seem to have no trouble swallowing them...

And you seem to have no trouble swallowing non-existent polls.

... even taking them as fact (regarding the emailer's question) while ignoring the obvious fact that the majority of the world was against the invasion.

How do we know this is an "obvious fact"? In the absence of rigorous polls we know no such thing.

Your stubbornness on this point is a textbook illustration of the precise point the e-mail writer is making -- your personal convictions on an as-yet unresolved matter of "fact" is coloring your beliefs, even though you don't watch FOX News (except for comic relief). You want to believe the "rest of the world" opposed the invasion, so you claim it as fact that they did, with no hard evidence. You want to believe the Iraqis also opposed the invasion, so you ignore evidence that they didn't.

You have a choice here -- either admit the original question asked cannot be answered yes or no, or admit that the question about Iraqis can also be answered yes or no. You can't have it both ways.

even the neocons on this board know that most of the world was opposed to the war.

Incorrect. No one on this board knows that as fact. There is simply not enough data available to prove it. As it happens, I personally think most of the world was opposed, but that doesn't make it fact -- by the standards you and EchoVortex insist on applying to the question of Iraqi approval.

and I think the fact that the UN was against it can be taken as evidence that the majority of the world was against it.

You don't know the UN was against it. No vote was ever taken in the UN General Assembly on the issue. As a matter of fact, no vote was ever taken in the UN Security Council on the issue either. This is readily verifiable, by the way.

why do you suppose the resolution sought by the US after 1441 never came to a vote?

Can you not remember the news reports you read even six months ago? Yet another illustration of a non-FOX News viewer getting things wrong. The reason they never bothered to vote on it was because France made it clear in no uncertain terms that they would veto the resolution regardless of how many others favored it.

yes lets look at them objectively. these questions aren't in the same category.

Incorrect. All the questions are in the same category. All of them have to day with the "major news events" (in this case events leading up to the invasion of Iraq) the survey purported to address.

one set of questions simply leaves no room for any interpretation.

I have pointed out they do. At least two -- the question of how many opposed the invasion and the question of how close the relationship between the Ba'athist regime and al Qaeda operatives really was -- are indeed open to interpretation.

the other set of questions can be reasonably debated.

No more reasonably than can the first set.

surely you can see the difference here.

By the standards you yourself apply, no I can't.

I'm not applying different standards.

Yeah you are. You are saying that no polls at all trump the Iraqi polls, and you are saying that in the "imminent threat" question we must allow some wiggle room for interpretation but must allow none in the "close working" relationship. If that isn't different standards, what is?

do you really think that a PBS viewer who believes that the statue scene was staged is as "wrong" as a FOX news viewer who believes that we found WMD in Iraq?

As EchoVortex points out, we are deciding issues of fact here. There are no degrees to it, it is either wrong or not.

regardless of what they said, people who are eager to be polled can't be taken as an accurate representation of the whole.

Then telephone polls are worthless as well, since only those eager to make their opinions known cooperate with the pollsters. Those who are not eager just hang up the phone and go back to their dinner. And I would still like to hear your explanation of how no polls at all can "be taken as an accurate representation of the whole".

so if North Korea had sold Iraq a nuclear bomb, but Iraq never used it, you wouldn't consider the sale a "significant amount" compared to the munitions sold by others?

Nope. It would not be a significant amount.

now you're setting the condition that it actually has to be used for it to be significant?

Nope. I gave about five different criteria -- by tonnage, by dollar amount, by percentage of total arsenal, by kill potential, by actual use. You can repeat this till you are blue in the face, but it doesn't change facts -- the anthrax cultures Iraq obtained were not a significant amount by any measure of Iraq's weaponry.

all I'm saying is that it can be considered a sale of a significant amount of arms...

A significant amount by what measure? By dollar amount? By tonnage? By kill potential? By percentage of total arsenal? By actual use?

are you intentionally missing my point here or what? again I say: no one is saying that the event never happened.

Then why are we still arguing?

your definition of staged seems to be: something that didn't happen.

Not at all. My definition of "staged" is identical to the dictionary definition you provided -- "to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect". The filmers didn't cause the event to happen, for public view or otherwise. They merely filmed it and broadcast it.

yes the event happened. but the version that was fed to the public was a "staged" version. get it now?

No, it wasn't "staged". They didn't cause the event to happen. Get it now?

they made it appear that it was some kind of spontaneous act by thousands of Iraqis to topple the statue.

So your claim is that the statue was toppled at the command of the news segment directors? Proof, please.

gee, just a while ago, you were saying to me: "A lot of what you raise is useless speculation anyway"

You missed the point entirely. It is not speculation to ask what happened to the questions which had to do with the other major news events mentioned in the article. Note the use of the plural -- "major news events". Maybe there really were just three questions asked about one of the major news events -- the invasion of Iraq -- in which case the survey was clearly a piece of crap, but let's move on anyway. How many questions were asked about the other major news events, and why do we have no commentary on the results of those questions?

and doesn't it follow that they are also more likely to be furthur misinformed by the biased news that they watch?

It is a reasonable assumption to make, yes. All I point out is that the methodology of a survey asking a mere three sloppily worded questions -- all of which fall on the same side of a single issue -- cannot prove that assumption.

you don't attempt to show that FOX news viewers are NOT misinformed.

How could I do that? Everyone holds various pieces of misinformation at every point in their lives, myself included.

you only try to make it appear normal by saying that the PBS/NPR audience is equally as misinformed, of which you have no proof whatsoever...

It is normal. And the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed -- given the right set of questions. The e-mail writer proposed four that he felt would lead to a reverse result. I added another. Given time, I'm sure he and I and even you could come up with others, but why bother? -- as I said already to EchoVortex, no polling organization will ever run them, therefore there is no way of proving it. Of course, there is no way of proving -- by the only standards you will accept -- that "the rest of the world" disapproved of the Iraqi invasion either, so why pursue it further?

actually, I do read the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek magazine and National Review and I even watch FOX news sometimes (for laughs).

I don't doubt you do. Would you consider them your primary source of news? Re-read my original statement, paying particular attention to the clause "compared to the amount of time you spend reading op-ed pieces from more liberal sources."

and I also read op-ed pieces from so called "liberal sources" like TIME magazine, the Washington Post, NY Times and LA Times. and having seen bias on both sides, I can unequivacally say that FOX news is by far the most biased major news organization in the US.

So you are saying FOX News broadcasts untruths? FOX says the WMD have been found in Iraq? FOX says people in other countries approve of the invasion? FOX says there was a close working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda? Links, please.

You seem to have faith in properly run telephone polls. You must be aware then that more than three times as many Americans say the news media has too much liberal bias than those who say it has too much conservative bias, and that these figures have scarcely changed over the last three years. An excerpt from http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031008.asp --

"Forty-five percent of Americans believe the news media in this country are too liberal, while only 14% say the news media are too conservative. These perceptions of liberal inclination have not changed over the last three years. A majority of Americans who describe their political views as conservative perceive liberal leanings in the media, while only about a third of self-described liberals perceive conservative leanings.

"More generally, the Sept. 8-10 Gallup Poll finds that a little more than half of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Trust in the news media has not changed significantly over the last six years. Conservatives have a slightly lower level of trust in the media than either moderates or liberals do."

I respect your right to give your opinion about the bias in FOX News, by the way -- even if it is a minority opinion. I merely point out that your opinion doesn't change the bad methodology used by Myerson.

let's set this ridiculous argument of causality aside for a minute because it's impossible to prove either way.

There is nothing "ridiculous" about it at all -- it is the entire premise behind Myerson's screed. I agree it is impossible to prove either way, but that is not what Myerson claims. He claims there is a causal relationship. I pointed out that Myerson is incorrect.

the fact remains that FOX news viewers are more misinformed.

On those specific three questions, it can be argued that FOX viewers are more misinformed -- or not, depending on what standards one applies to determine the proof of the answers. See my above comments re phrasing and the acceptance of "everyone knows" rather than actual polls to validate the truth. I still say a different set of questions would yield different results, and you seem to believe the results would be identical no matter what questions are asked. In the absence of further polls, we'll never know for sure, so there is no point either of us continuing to repeat ourselves. I say let the readers of this thread make up their own minds as to which scenario is more likely.

pinky


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2024448 - 10/20/03 12:45 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

pinky writes:

"I am not "defending" FOX News"

infidelGOD asks:

"oh you're not?"

No, I'm not.

You seem to be forgetting something here -- on this particular issue I have the advantage of operating from a position of complete neutrality in that I watch none of the networks mentioned in the survey, and haven't in sixteen years.

The only time I watch TV news at all is the very occasional Dominican Republic newscast, and the odd CBC news program during the few weeks each year that I am in Canada. I haven't the faintest conception from personal experience how biased any of the news programs may be -- I lack the necessary evidence of my own senses to come to any conclusion at all on the matter.

From the descriptions provided in this forum of various FOX political commentators I suspect I would find more points of agreement with some of their opinions than I would with the opinions of Peter Jennings, for example (I mention Peter Jennings because I used to watch him when he and I were both still Canadian, so I know quite a bit about his political bent), but in the case of the actual news presented by any of the networks I am completely ignorant. I have no personal axe to grind. For all I know, every damn one of them is inaccurate as hell.

I have never heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio, or seen him on TV. Or Anne Coulter or Sean Hannity or Michael O'Reilly or Connie Chung or anyone other than the Sixty Minutes gang. Oh, and I have seen Barbara Walters and Dianne Sawyer a few times.

Therefore, I am forced to evaluate the information (and lack thereof) presented by Myerson with no preconceived ideas of favoritism one way or the other. But I do know enough to be able to say with complete confidence that the premise Myerson is stating is flawed. Given the information in his article, no reputable statistician or social scientist would have any confidence whatsoever in the validity of Myerson's conclusion -- there is simply not enough data to establish a causal relationship.

pinky


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2024491 - 10/20/03 01:05 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

The questionnaire and report can be found here:

www.pipa.org


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2024523 - 10/20/03 01:44 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Thanks for finding that.

After reading the questionnaire, I rest my case.

pinky


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2024573 - 10/20/03 02:32 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

pinksharkmark said:
Thanks for finding that.

After reading the questionnaire, I rest my case.

pinky




Without stating what, specifically, is wrong with the questionnaire, you have no case.


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2025254 - 10/20/03 11:15 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

You seem to be forgetting something here -- on this particular issue I have the advantage of operating from a position of complete neutrality in that I watch none of the networks mentioned in the survey, and haven't in sixteen years.


Hearing you say that you're "operating from a position of complete neutrality" is about as humorous as hearing Fox News call themselves "fair and balanced." You know that Fox News is right-wing and you yourself have admitting to agreeing with their commentators more often than those of mainstream news outlets. You also know that PBS/NPR viewers tend towards the liberal end of the spectrum. That's all you NEED to know for the possibility of bias creeping in--actually watching the broadcasts is not necessary.

Given the information in his article, no reputable statistician or social scientist would have any confidence whatsoever in the validity of Myerson's conclusion -- there is simply not enough data to establish a causal relationship.


You have yet to address the fact that the more attention a Fox viewer paid to the news, the more likely he was to get the facts wrong. Here is the relevant quotation from the report:

"Among Fox viewers who did not follow the news at all closely, 22% had this misperception, jumping to 34% and 32% among those who followed the news not very and somewhat closely respectively, and then jumping even higher to 44% among those who followed the news very closely."

Now, let us assume for a second that Fox is reporting unvarnished fact and nothing but. Logic would dictate that the more attention the viewer paid to those facts, the more likely he would be to get those facts right. Yet in the case of Fox, the more attention the viewer pays to what is being broadcast, the more likely he is to get the facts wrong.

Generally speaking, the only information that makes you more wrong the more you pay attention to it, is wrong information. Or misinformation. Or distorted information, like that Saddam statue video which you conveniently tried to brush under the rug as being normal practice.

Please explain how it is possible that Fox viewers get the facts wrong more often the more closely they attend to the news. Do Fox viewers in general have some sort of neurological dysfunction that actually makes them process sensory stimuli and incoming information less accurately the more they pay attention to it? If so, I suggest you send your findings to the New England Journal of Medicine, because you have made medical history.



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InvisibleXochitl
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2026144 - 10/20/03 03:52 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Pinksharkmark: No, it wasn't "staged". They didn't cause the event to happen. Get it now?




I do not recall anyone saying the cameramen and editors themselves purposefully staged the statue-toppling as you seem to insist. Rather, it seems to have been the US military under direction of the Pentagon/State Department/Bush Administration that flew in a rag-tag band of pro-US Iraqis and mercenaries and brought them to the location of the statue. The entire square was sealed off by the Marines. The statue was then pulled down and these men danced and cheered.

Two versions of the edited recordings exist: one set that shows wide angles and aerial shots (from the Palastine Hotel) of the few dozen mercenaries/US soliders/US agents/pro-US Iraqis and the other with narrow angles and close-ups of these men cheering. Non-US/non-corporate news agencies seem have shown the version of wide angles, while news outlets like Faux News chose the narrow angle version and added their soundbyte: "The Iraqi people welcome the liberators and tear down the statue in joy."

Why would the US government stage such an event? Symbolic reasons to signal "the end of major combat." The toppling of the Saddam statue was a matter of picture-friendly postcard Psy-Ops. Any military would have done the same.


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As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

-Donald Rumsfeld 2/2/02 Pentagon


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2026550 - 10/20/03 06:07 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

That cuts both ways. We don't know the exact phrasing of the questions (or even the number of questions) asked in the survey mentioned by Myerson

well now we know what the exact phrasing and methodology was. do you have the same information on the polls out of Iraq?

If it is correct for you to say it is a fact that the rest of the world disapproved -- with no poll results (incomplete or otherwise) at all to back you up -- then using the exact same standards as you, it is correct to say the Iraqis approved.

I don't have to rely on polls to tell me that the world was opposed. you even agree that the world was opposed, so how did you come to this conclusion without any polls? could it be that you actually used logic and common sense? without having to post polls from dozens of countries, can we do the same here? try to follow along: if large numbers of people in countries that supported the war (like Great Britain and Japan) were opposed to the war, then doesn't it follow logically that in the countries that actually opposed the war, the precentage of people opposing the war would be far greater? don't call it a fact if you don't want to, just call it common knowledge. and if you believe that there was worldwide support for the war, "misinformed" is truly the right word for you here.

on the other hand, if you want believe that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion, you would have to rely entirely on these polls coming out a war zone. I don't know if I could trust these polls without seeing the exact phrasing and methodology. I haven't even seen any of these polls you speak of, so I certainly wouldn't take them as fact or common knowledge. whether or not the Iraqis supported the war is simply unknown at this point.

And you seem to have no trouble swallowing non-existent polls.

what "non-existent" poll are you speaking of? it's ironic since your whole argument rests on this hypothetical poll of PBS viewers

How do we know this is an "obvious fact"? In the absence of rigorous polls we know no such thing.

not having had a TV for sixteen years, I understand if you are a little bit out of touch on this, but we can "know" things without relying on rigorous polls. anyone who has followed the news in the last six months would "know" that most of the world was opposed to the war. I understand, since you rely entirely on the internet and print media for your news, you haven't been introduced to the wonders of telecommunications in modern America. you're ignoring the fact that it's the primary source of news for most Americans (unfortunately). if you haven't had a TV in sixteen years, I don't imagine you're too media savvy and I'm afraid you are working with imcomplete information... like you said: "I lack the necessary evidence of my own senses to come to any conclusion at all on the matter"

You have a choice here -- either admit the original question asked cannot be answered yes or no, or admit that the question about Iraqis can also be answered yes or no. You can't have it both ways.

both questions can be answered yes or no. but to answer the second one, you will be relying entirely on polls coming out of a war zone. to answer the first one, you only need to use a bit of common sense and logic.

As it happens, I personally think most of the world was opposed, but that doesn't make it fact -- by the standards you and EchoVortex insist on applying to the question of Iraqi approval.

actually, I don't take any poll as fact. this is precisely what you've done on the question of Iraqi approval because you have only the polls from Iraq to go by. as for the question of world approval, there are polls, but more importantly, there are statements from the countries themselves opposing the war. there was the UN non-vote. there is the fact that there was massive opposition even within the coalition. this can all be taken as evidence that the majority of the world was opposed. you don't have to take it as fact but anyone who has been out in the real world, immersed in the media would "know" that the majority of the world was against it.

why do you suppose the resolution sought by the US after 1441 never came to a vote?

Can you not remember the news reports you read even six months ago? Yet another illustration of a non-FOX News viewer getting things wrong. The reason they never bothered to vote on it was because France made it clear in no uncertain terms that they would veto the resolution regardless of how many others favored it.


yeah it wasn't that long ago, so you should have no trouble remembering that Frace was hardly the only country to be opposed to it. Russia, China, Germany were also opposed to name a few.

Incorrect. All the questions are in the same category. All of them have to day with the "major news events" (in this case events leading up to the invasion of Iraq) the survey purported to address.

this is where you (and the email author) go wrong. the emailer makes a flawed assumption that his questions are equivalent to the ones in the original poll. most of his questions are asking for opinions. think about it. when you ask someone if the toppling of the statue was staged, you are asking them for their opinion - you are asking for their interpretation of the event. when you ask them if WMD have been found in Iraq, you are testing them on their knowledge of FACTS.

lets not apply the "same standards" to two fundamentally different questions.

I mean, sure you can use that question in a poll, but it would only be an opinion poll. I know that to you, certain opinions will always be wrong. you could say "it wasn't staged, it happened!" all you want, but it doesn't make it fact. people have different interpretations of the event. different opinions. there can't be a "correct" answer, unless you're saying that there is a "correct" interpretation of the event. this question does not determine how misinformed someone is, it only determines how people saw the event. there is no right answer.

and if you think that it wasn't staged, because it really "happened", you're completely missing the point, the version that was shown on TV here in the US was produced for public effect, it wasn't a complete fabrication, just some creative cropping and cutting for effect. but I guess since you haven't had a TV in a while, you wouldn't really know what was shown and wouldn't really know how staged it was. yet you are absolutely convinced that it wasn't staged, based on things you've read on the internet, I presume.

I have pointed out they do. At least two -- the question of how many opposed the invasion and the question of how close the relationship between the Ba'athist regime and al Qaeda operatives really was -- are indeed open to interpretation.

and I have pointed out how absurd it is to open those questions to interpretation. you refuse to see that these questions are fundamentally different from the ones the emailer asks. like you said, look at them objectively. they specifically test people on what they know. let's go through them again, in the original form:

1. Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?

if it is their "impression" that WMD have been found in Iraq, they would simply be wrong. I don't see how any interpretation of this question can change that.

2. Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization?

sure, you could argue that some documents found in Iraq means there was a close relationship, but any reasonable person would conclude that there isn't enough evidence there. if you answer in the positive, you might not have a high standard of evidence, or you may just be misinformed.

3. Thinking about how all the people in the world feel about the US having gone to war with Iraq, do you think:

this question does have some wiggle room, but if people got the impression that "The majority of people favor the US having gone to war" as 25% of the respondants did, they are either misinformed, or they weren't paying attention or they're waiting for poll results to come in from 180 countries...

surely you can see the difference here.

By the standards you yourself apply, no I can't.


well then I think you're letting your prejudice show. these questions are clealy different. the emailer's questions mostly ask for people's opinions. of course, his point is that the PBS audience would have the "wrong" opinions on those questions and would therefor be as "misinformed" as FOX news viewers, but I think the more appropriate word here would be "mis-opinioned".

Yeah you are. You are saying that no polls at all trump the Iraqi polls, and you are saying that in the "imminent threat" question we must allow some wiggle room for interpretation but must allow none in the "close working" relationship. If that isn't different standards, what is?

this may come as a shock to you, but there are different schools of thought on these things. things are not so black and white as you see them. there is some debate as to whether the Bush administration tried to portray Iraq as an imminent threat. there are people of different opinions on this matter. so if I answer "yes, I believe that the Bush administration claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat", this is not an "incorrect" opinion. and since you haven't had a TV in sixteen years, I don't think you really understand the relationship between the government and the media in 21st century America, and how TV plays a huge role in the government getting it's message out to the people. most people in this country rely on TV for their news, so if you didn't have access to one, you wouldn't really know how Iraq was portrayed before the war now would you? let me get back to what you said which I think is appropriate here: "I lack the necessary evidence of my own senses to come to any conclusion at all on the matter"... the bottom line is that this question is open to legitimate debate. don't make the mistake of thinking that only certain opinions are the correct ones, that's rather close-minded of you. there is no wrong answer here.

now I know that you'll say the same thing about the question of Iraq and al qaida having a close working relationship, that it is also open to different opinions, but again, you are applying your "same standards" to different things, there is virtually no debate on this question. even the most hardcore neocons don't make this claim of a close working relationship anymore because the evidence simply doesn't support it. if you want to hold on to the view that there was a close working relationship, you are either misinformed or you want to believe it. if there is no debate, and it is agreed by almost everyone that there was no close working relationship, and you still get this one wrong, as 48% of FOX news viewers did, I'm afraid you are simply misinformed

do you really think that a PBS viewer who believes that the statue scene was staged is as "wrong" as a FOX news viewer who believes that we found WMD in Iraq?

As EchoVortex points out, we are deciding issues of fact here. There are no degrees to it, it is either wrong or not.


and my point was that the question of whether the statue scene was staged isn't a question of fact, it's a question of interpretation. the same can't be said of the question about the WMD in Iraq. THAT is a question of fact. again I see that you either can't see the difference here, or you're willfully ignoring it because it pretty much destroys your argument. it is your contention that PBS viewers would be as "misinformed" as FOX news viewer if given these questions in a hypothetical poll. ignoring for a minute that your whole argument rests on these non-existent polls, why not examine these questions more carefully? look at them objectively and you'll see that they aren't of the same variety. the emailer asks for opinions to try to prove that PBS viewers are misinformed on facts. see the logical flaw there?

And I would still like to hear your explanation of how no polls at all can "be taken as an accurate representation of the whole".

and I would like you to tell me where exactly I said such a thing

now you're setting the condition that it actually has to be used for it to be significant?

Nope. I gave about five different criteria -- by tonnage, by dollar amount, by percentage of total arsenal, by kill potential, by actual use. You can repeat this till you are blue in the face, but it doesn't change facts -- the anthrax cultures Iraq obtained were not a significant amount by any measure of Iraq's weaponry.


that's a fact to you. but again you have trouble grasping that people might have different opinions on this. I think it can be argued that selling precursors to biological weapons can be considered a sale of a significant amount of arms. that's not so unreasonable is it? I'm not claiming anything as fact, as you are. what I'm saying is that there can be legitimate debate about this question. once people have the facts, they can form their own opinions on whether the sale of anthrax constituted a "significant amount".

all I'm saying is that it can be considered a sale of a significant amount of arms...

A significant amount by what measure? By dollar amount? By tonnage? By kill potential? By percentage of total arsenal? By actual use?


if it isn't already obvious, I'm saying it was a significant amount by kill potential, not tonnage, or actual usage or any other criteria that you decided to apply.

No, it wasn't "staged". They didn't cause the event to happen. Get it now?

yawn. it must be great to have things so black and white. to you it's a fact that the scene wasn't staged. can you just make a little room in your mind for the possibility that other people might hold different opinions on this? I'm not saying that it's a fact that the scene was staged. all I'm saying is that there are different interpretations of the event. it is your opinion that it wasn't staged. many people think otherwise. asking if the scene was staged doesn't tell you if someone is misinformed because it's not dealing with fact, it only tells you how they interpreted the event. you have to admit that these are really poor questions posed by the emailer. this kind of stuff belongs in an opinion poll, to find out how people saw things, not to find out how misinformed they are.

Maybe there really were just three questions asked about one of the major news events -- the invasion of Iraq -- in which case the survey was clearly a piece of crap, but let's move on anyway. How many questions were asked about the other major news events, and why do we have no commentary on the results of those questions?

now we know that there were other questions. does that invalidate the findings for you? polls generally aren't taken with just three questions so it's a given that there would be others, a lot of them deal with people's opinions, such as "Do you favor or oppose the US going to war with Iraq?" but the three questions in the article are questions that test what people know about the war. at least there is a poll, along with the polling methodology and the exact phrasing of the questions. all you have to go on is a hypothetical poll from an anonymous emailer, with some sloppy questions asking people for their opinions, and trying to determine how "misinformed" they are based on the answers given. you haven't given a shred of evidence to prove your point that PBS viewers are as misinformed as FOX news viewers. you made that assertion so the burden of proof is on you.

And the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed -- given the right set of questions.

prove this please.

So you are saying FOX News broadcasts untruths? FOX says the WMD have been found in Iraq? FOX says people in other countries approve of the invasion? FOX says there was a close working relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda?

no that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that FOX news is biased. they don't blatantly lie of course, but much of FOX news is actually commentary, where the bias comes in. but of course, having never seen FOX news, you wouldn't know that.

Links, please.

oh great, let's beat each other over the head with links now. it seems to be your preferred method of operation. I normally don't ask for links but maybe first you should provide me with links proving that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed". that is your argument isn't it? have any evidence to back it up or is it just more useless speculation?

You must be aware then that more than three times as many Americans say the news media has too much liberal bias than those who say it has too much conservative bias, and that these figures have scarcely changed over the last three years

ah, thanks for bringing this up. here's another example of what I'm talking about. when you ask people about bias in the media, you are asking for their opinions. this is an opinion poll. there will be a variety of answers but no "right" answer. see how that works?

let's set this ridiculous argument of causality aside for a minute because it's impossible to prove either way.

There is nothing "ridiculous" about it at all -- it is the entire premise behind Myerson's screed. I agree it is impossible to prove either way, but that is not what Myerson claims. He claims there is a causal relationship. I pointed out that Myerson is incorrect.


can you tell me where he claimed there was causality? maybe you misread this sentence: "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." this just sounds like he's reporting the findings of the poll, which showed exactly that. he doesn't say that watching FOX news caused those misperceptions. or maybe you took his "flight of fancy" a little too seriously. either way, he's simply reporting the results and speculating. causality certainly isn't "the entire premise behind Myerson's screed". maybe you hold some misperceptions on his article...

I still say a different set of questions would yield different results

proof please

and you seem to believe the results would be identical no matter what questions are asked.

not at all. maybe you skimmed what I said earlier but I said that liberals hold some misperceptions of their own. my contention is the same as the original article's - that FOX news viewers are the most misinformed. if you want to dispute this with facts, go ahead, but we could do without useless speculation on how PBS viewers would answer a hypothetical poll.

on this particular issue I have the advantage of operating from a position of complete neutrality in that I watch none of the networks mentioned in the survey, and haven't in sixteen years.

you call that neutrality? I call it operating from a position of complete ignorance. you haven't had TV in sixteen years, yet you feel qualified to speak about bias in the media, based on what? what you read on the internet? and you feel qualified to talk about "standard techniques used by just about every news segment producer in the world"? you certaintly write as if you know what you're talking about. from what I've read I would have thought that you were completely immersed in American media and that you know a great deal about how the media works, but I wonder just how much you've missed in these last sixteen years. no offence man, but living in the Dominican, without a TV for the last sixteen years, you don't exactly have your finger on the pulse of America. and you wouldn't really know how Iraq was portrayed by the administration, or how the statue scene was portrayed. but you seem absolutely convinced that you have the "correct" version of things. I find that very interesting.

but in the case of the actual news presented by any of the networks I am completely ignorant.

if you rely on the print media and the internet for all your news, your view of the world may be a little bit incomplete, or at the very least, your views on American media may not be entirely accurate. don't underestimate the huge role TV plays in shaping public opinion in the US. I'm not saying that TV news is good, but it's what you have to deal with because most Americans get their news from the TV, so if you're not at least familiar with it, you are missing a big piece of the puzzle.

But I do know enough to be able to say with complete confidence that the premise Myerson is stating is flawed

what premise would that be? if you don't agree with his premise, do you agree with the results of the poll? it appears that you do, since you attempted to make it appear normal by saying that PBS viewers are also misinformed. but you haven't provided any evidence for it, just more word games.

why not attempt to clearly lay out your case and try to prove it?
upon closer examination I see that it's a pretty thin case you have there with absolutely no evidence to back it up. and remember that the burden of proof is on you. the original poll proves that FOX news viewers are misinformed, at least on those questions. you asserted that PBS viewers would be equally misinformed, if given a different set of questions. you have no evidence for this of course, only your own speculation based on imcomplete information. I'd be happy to continue this debate if you had anything more substantial to offer, besides your ridiculous insistence on applying the "same standards" to everything, regardless of the context, and your stubborn contention that those four questions from the emailer all have "correct" answers, when they would clearly elicit people's opinions and their interpretations of events. I don't see what else you have to go on. speculation is fine and all, but if you're going to insist on the highest standards of evidence from others, you have to be a little more forthcoming with some evidence of your own.

you already changed the terms of this debate from "PBS viewers are as misinformed as FOX news viewers" which you couldn't prove, to "there is no causality, FOX news doesn't cause people to be misinformed", which is pretty much unprovable. how convenient. in any case, whatever your argument, you have no proof of anything, only empty speculation about how people would answer a hypothetical poll. when it comes down to it, there really isn't much to argue about. you posted an email that was complete nonsense and I don't think you really examined it carefully. when the emailer says: "imagine an opposite poll", he makes the flawed assumption that his questions are equivalent to the ones in the original poll. clearly this is not the case. he asks questions which would elicit opinions and tries to say that people with the "wrong" opinions are misinformed. this is some sloppy logic don't you think? your whole case rests on some seriously flawed assuptions and you just need to rethink the whole thing and look at it more objectively. those seven questions are not all the same. if you didn't have any preconceptions about this, you would see that.


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Xochitl]
    #2028837 - 10/21/03 01:09 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Xochitl writes:

Rather, it seems to have been the US military under direction of the Pentagon/State Department/Bush Administration that flew in a rag-tag band of pro-US Iraqis and mercenaries and brought them to the location of the statue.

You've been out of the loop. That theory was debunked months ago. It is however true that there were not a lot of people in the plaza.

pinky


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2029114 - 10/21/03 02:53 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Let me preface this by saying that for the last couple of days both the electrical grid and the telecom in my beautiful third-world country have been even shittier than usual, so I won't have time to address your post (and EchoVortex's) in one chunk. I'll type till the already partially depleted battery in this borrowed laptop gets low, then try to connect to the Net to send it. I will eventually address all the points each of you raised, it just might take a few days.

infidelGOD writes:

well now we know what the exact phrasing and methodology was.

Yes, we do. I find this preamble to be particularly relevant to the point I was making about phrasing being all-important:

Quote:

STATEMENT: The next few questions ask for your impressions of some things that you may or may not know. Please just indicate your impression, whether or not you feel very confident that it is correct.




The instructions did not read (as just one example of an alternate phrasing): "Here are some statements which may be true or may be false. Please indicate to the best of your knowledge the ones you know to be true."

How much more plainly can the pollsters emphasize they are not asking for a rigorous examination of personal certainties? Hell, they are not even coming close to asking for a judgment on truth or falsehood -- it's almost the same instructions a psychiatrist gives you at the beginning of one of those word-association psychological tests where he says, "I'm gonna say a word and I want you to answer me with another word -- the first one that pops into your head.".

Not only that, but the instructions go even further -- they politely ask (at least they said "please") the respondents to respond to things they may not even know about. They are bending over backwards to say that it doesn't matter whether the respondents even know anything about the issue or not -- all that matters is that they give a response. Note that there is not even the option to reply "I don't know", or "I'm not sure," or "I have no opinion," or "none of the above" -- the only option left to those respondents unwilling to commit themselves was to skip the question. And you will notice that some did just that.

Clearly this questionnaire was not designed to ascertain the level of factual knowledge the respondents held on various aspects of the Iraq invasion. As a side note, that's another thing Myerson got wrong -- the questionnaire was not about "major news events", it was about the invasion of Iraq and people's attitudes towards it. No other major news events were mentioned.

Once you read the full report, you can see what the goal of the designers of the poll was -- to demonstrate their premise that since anyone who favored invading Iraq was clearly in the wrong, the only reason someone would actually favor it was because he got his facts wrong. Their premise is (in a nutshell) -- "if only you knew all the facts, you would be in agreement with us: invading Iraq was wrong". They then go on to analyze the data to demonstrate their point -- the greater the "misperception" (and note the immediate substitute of "misperception" for the more accurate "impression") in a given group, the higher the likelihood that group supported the invasion. Once again, they (deliberately or otherwise) feel that this "arrow of causality" can only work in one direction -- you are mistaken about certain points, therefore you support the invasion. It never occurs to them that the reverse is equally likely -- you have made up your mind that the invasion is the right thing to do, therefore your impression of certain points is shaded by your prior conviction. Remember, we are talking about impressions here -- even impressions about things of which you may admittedly have no knowledge at all.

A final fact about methodology for you to ponder --
Quote:

margin of error -- plus/minus 2% to 3.5%



percentage of PBS viewers combined with NPR viewers-- 3%

So the entire PBS/NPR crowd combined is 40 people (do the math yourself if you don't trust me), and falls within the range of statistical "noise" in any event.

do you have the same information on the polls out of Iraq?

No. But I can't read Arabic anyway, so I don't imagine it would help me much to see the questions. *grin* As for methodology, the pollsters would use the same methodology they normally would, except in the selection of the respondents in the Baghdad poll.

I don't have to rely on polls to tell me that the world was opposed. you even agree that the world was opposed, so how did you come to this conclusion without any polls? could it be that you actually used logic and common sense? Without having to post polls from dozens of countries, can we do the same here?

And I don't need the Iraq polls to confirm what I already know -- that the Iraqis are in favor. I used logic and common sense as well as reports from liberated Iraqis. You can't seriously believe the majority of Iraqis opposed being set free.

try to follow along: if large numbers of people in countries that supported the war (like Great Britain and Japan) were opposed to the war, then doesn't it follow logically that in the countries that actually opposed the war, the precentage of people opposing the war would be far greater?

Of course it logically follows. It's just that I have never seen a list of how many of the 190 (I was wrong about the earlier 180 number) countries in the world opposed it. To date, the largest number of countries where we can actually check "opposed" and "in favor" is the Gallup poll included in one of EchoVortex's links which totalled something like 62 countries -- roughly a third of the total.

don't call it a fact if you don't want to, just call it common knowledge.

But it isn't common knowledge. That's my entire point. I know of nowhere on the Net where one can find such information -- nowhere. In my opinion, the majority of the world probably did oppose the invasion -- but you have already demonstrated that my opinion means exactly zero to you. I will admit that when I looked at the list of countries EchoVortex's link provided, there were some surprises for me. There were several countries in favor of the invasion which I would never have guessed would support it. As well, there were a few I had thought would support it who didn't. You should check it out -- I'll bet there'll be a few surprises for you, too.

and if you believe that there was worldwide support for the war, "misinformed" is truly the right word for you here.

But I don't believe that. I have already told you the reverse. The point is that I don't know that, and neither do you. The thing is, by your own standards, my beliefs are worthless -- unless they happen to coincide with your own. If they differ, then I am required to provide proof -- i.e. the validity of the polls held in Iraq. You can't have it both ways.

on the other hand, if you want believe that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion, you would have to rely entirely on these polls coming out a war zone.

See what I mean? There you go again.

You would certainly not have to rely solely on those polls. I knew (through common sense) before the polls were released that the majority support it. The polls confirmed it.

I haven't even seen any of these polls you speak of, so I certainly wouldn't take them as fact or common knowledge.

Then even though I haven't had a television for sixteen years, I am ahead of you on this point at least. Gotta love the Net. Links to all the polls have been posted in this forum already (not by me). I first came across them on either Reuters or Yahoo or ABCNews.com -- might have been CBC.ca, though. I can't remember which now.

whether or not the Iraqis supported the war is simply unknown at this point.

Whether or not the inhabitants of the other 120 plus countries in the world (for which we haven't yet seen any info) supported the war is simply unknown at this point. You can't say that because we know Nigeria supported the invasion we also know that Djibouti did. It doesn't work that way, as a look at the info in EchoVortex's link will show. Check it out yourself -- there are some surprises in there.

The battery on this laptop is just about dead, so I'll post this bit now. I will address the rest of your (and EchoVortex's) post when I can.

pinky


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InvisibleXochitl
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2030033 - 10/21/03 07:18 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

You've been out of the loop. That theory was debunked months ago. It is however true that there were not a lot of people in the plaza.




Please provide info/sources of this "debunking." Thanks.


--------------------
As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

-Donald Rumsfeld 2/2/02 Pentagon


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2031891 - 10/22/03 09:33 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

How much more plainly can the pollsters emphasize they are not asking for a rigorous examination of personal certainties? Hell, they are not even coming close to asking for a judgment on truth or falsehood -- it's almost the same instructions a psychiatrist gives you at the beginning of one of those word-association psychological tests where he says, "I'm gonna say a word and I want you to answer me with another word -- the first one that pops into your head.".

Now you're trying to portray the questionnaire as being, or trying to be, nothing more than a Rorschrach test or some exercise in free association. When the pollsters use the word "impression" they are not asking the people being polled simply to give "free associations": I say Saddam, you say WMD. That's got to be the most convoluted interpretation of those questions I can imagine. Whether the respondent knows with certainty a position to be absolutely true or not is not what the pollsters want to know: they want to know what the respondents perceive reality to be. A subtle difference, and one apparently lost on you.

Not only that, but the instructions go even further -- they politely ask (at least they said "please") the respondents to respond to things they may not even know about. They are bending over backwards to say that it doesn't matter whether the respondents even know anything about the issue or not -- all that matters is that they give a response. Note that there is not even the option to reply "I don't know", or "I'm not sure," or "I have no opinion," or "none of the above" -- the only option left to those respondents unwilling to commit themselves was to skip the question. And you will notice that some did just that.

Yes, which shows that respondents were free not to respond if they had no clue. They had that right, they knew it, and many of them exercised it. So what's the problem?

Clearly this questionnaire was not designed to ascertain the level of factual knowledge the respondents held on various aspects of the Iraq invasion.

So are you contending that if the preamble to the questionnaire had been "Here are some statements which may be true or may be false. Please indicate to the best of your knowledge the ones you know to be true," then the results would have been wildly different from what they were? So much so that the NPR/PBS crowd would have been wrong just as or more often than the Fox crowd? That's a huge leap of faith . . . er, I mean, logic, if you ask me.

A final fact about methodology for you to ponder --

Quote:
margin of error -- plus/minus 2% to 3.5%


percentage of PBS viewers combined with NPR viewers-- 3%

So the entire PBS/NPR crowd combined is 40 people (do the math yourself if you don't trust me), and falls within the range of statistical "noise" in any event.


Uh, sorry, but your interpretation of the statistical data is completely wrong.

Margin of error means that any percentage quoted could actually fall within a range of points around the number given. So, for example, the percentage of Fox viewers who believed the three incorrect pieces of information was given at 45%. The actual number, given the margin of error, is anywhere from 41.5% to 48.5%. See here for a definition of margin of error.

However, that margin of error does not apply to the percentage of people claiming to use of a particular news outlet as their main news sources. If 3% of the respondents use PBS/NPR, then three percent of the respondents use PBS/NPR. The question would be whether 3% of the population as a whole (the population the poll is supposed to represent) uses PBS/NPR. According to the margin of error, the possible percentage of the population who uses PBS/NPR ranges from -0.5% (an obvious impossiblility)to 6.5% percent. That is all that the margin of error implies, and it does nothing to change the fact that the PBS/NPR respondents got the questions wrong FAR less often than FOX viewers--by a statistical spread more than wide enough to be statistically significant.

Finally, the sample in question (June to September) for which we are given data on what percentage uses PBS/NPR is composed of 3334 people. 3% of 3334 amounts to 100 people, not 40 as you claim. So yes, I did the math myself, and it turned out that I had very good reason not to trust you, just as I have very good reasons not to give much credence to your toothless claim that the wording of the questionnaire renders all of its findings invalid across the board.

No. But I can't read Arabic anyway, so I don't imagine it would help me much to see the questions. *grin* As for methodology, the pollsters would use the same methodology they normally would, except in the selection of the respondents in the Baghdad poll.

I'm sure English translations are available. I've read the methodology for the Baghdad poll conducted by Gallup (see their site: www.gallup.com) and it was nowhere near their own methodology for US polls, not by a long shot. It would be nice, you know, if you actually provided some evidence once in a while to back some up of your claims. I'm getting a bit tired of being the only one here who actually gives a damn about providing evidence instead of mere rhetoric.


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2037658 - 10/23/03 07:57 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

Now you're trying to portray the questionnaire as being, or trying to be, nothing more than a Rorschrach test or some exercise in free association.

I didn't say that -- I said the instructions given by PIPA are "almost" like the instructions a psychiatrist gives at the beginning of a word-association test.

Whether the respondent knows with certainty a position to be absolutely true or not is not what the pollsters want to know: they want to know what the respondents perceive reality to be. A subtle difference, and one apparently lost on you.

If that is not what they wanted to know, then how can you claim the answers to the questions asked demonstrate people believe "facts" which aren't true? They demonstrate no such thing. They merely demonstrate impressions.

Yes, which shows that respondents were free not to respond if they had no clue. They had that right, they knew it, and many of them exercised it. So what's the problem?

You seem to have no difficulty claiming the government and their willing lackeys in the media use special wording to "manipulate" people into holding false impressions or even into accepting as fact things which are false. Yet you don't see the author's attempt to manipulate people into answering a question on which they may have no knowledge and have no confidence in as relevant. In other polls, there is often a choice such as "none of the above", or "no opinion" or whatever. In this poll not only is there no such option, but the pollsters go out of their way to cajole respondents to answer with no confidence things of which they may have no knowledge.

My point is that if they had left out these pleas to "answer no matter what", and especially if they had included the standard "don't know" option, the percentages would have been different. Rather than 35% answering "A", 25% answering "B", 37% answering "C", and 3% deciding against instructions to skip the question, the numbers could have been 28% A, 11% B, 31% C, and 30% "don't know".

So are you contending that if the preamble to the questionnaire had been "Here are some statements which may be true or may be false. Please indicate to the best of your knowledge the ones you know to be true," then the results would have been wildly different from what they were?

Yep. There is an enormous difference between saying "I get the impression that guy is homosexual" and saying "I know for a fact that guy is a homosexual," or "It is my impression that LSD causes genetic deformities in the children," vs "I know for a fact that LSD users have deformed kids." Even the PIPA people say the same --

"However, it should be noted that when respondents say that something is likely -- especially those who just say that it is somewhat likely -- it does not mean they have come to the conclusion that it is the case."

Here we are talking about people who are not even committing themselves to saying it is "somewhat likely", but people who say, "I get the impression that..."

So much so that the NPR/PBS crowd would have been wrong just as or more often than the Fox crowd? That's a huge leap of faith . . . er, I mean, logic, if you ask me.

First of all, the PBS/NPR crowd is statistically insignificant at a mere 41 people, so all of the conclusions drawn about them are meaningless no matter what form the questions took. Secondly, I didn't say the FOX crowd would outperform the PBS/NPR crowd (or the print media readers) on those three questions, but on the e-mailer's questions.

As for believing the phrasing of the questions (or the instructions on how to answer) has no effect on the results, there is no reputable polling organization who would agree with you on that point. Certainly Gallup doesn't. From the Gallup site you linked for us (thanks a lot for the link, by the way) --

"However, when it comes to modern-day attitude surveys conducted by most of the major national polling organizations, question wording is probably the greatest source of bias and error in the data, followed by question order. Writing a clear, unbiased question takes great care and discipline, as well as extensive knowledge about public opinion."

"For brand new question areas, Gallup will often test several different wordings. Additionally, it is not uncommon for Gallup to ask several different questions about a content area of interest. Then in the analysis phase of a given survey, Gallup analysts can make note of the way Americans respond to different question wordings, presenting a more complete picture of the population?s underlying attitudes.

"Through the years, Gallup has often used a split sample technique to measure the impact of different question wordings. A randomly selected half of a given survey is administered one wording of a question, while the other half is administered the other wording. This allows Gallup to compare the impact of differences in wordings of questions, and often to report out the results of both wordings, allowing those who are looking at the results of the poll to see the impact of nuances in ways of addressing key issues."

Margin of error means that any percentage quoted could actually fall within a range of points around the number given. So, for example, the percentage ... (snip)...That is all that the margin of error implies, and it does nothing to change the fact that the PBS/NPR respondents got the questions wrong FAR less often than FOX viewers--by a statistical spread more than wide enough to be statistically significant.

You are correct, I phrased that very sloppily indeed. Mea culpa. What I had meant to point out is that in a sample of 1362 people, a swing of 41 people in either direction is ? 3%. The fact that this happens to be the number of combined PBS viewers/NPR listeners is coincidental.

Let me try this again -- a sample size of 40 people cannot give you anywhere close to the same degree of accuracy as a sample size of 1362 people. The accuracy of ? 2 to 3.5% is applicable only to the entire group of 1362, not to every smaller subgroup, and certainly not to a subgroup as small as 40 people. I am not a trained statistician, so I don't know exactly how much greater the swing is. Is it unreasonable to assume it would be as much as ? 11%? Or 17%? Or maybe as much as 23%? I don't know. Gallup's example indicates that cutting a group size in half (from 2,000 to 1,000 in their example) increases the error rate by fifty per cent (from ? 2% to ? 3%). I don't know if that ratio is a constant -- I suspect that as the groups get ever smaller, the ratio gets larger. I do know, however, that the accuracy swing on a group of a mere 40 people is sufficiently large as to render the results suspect. If this were not the case, pollsters wouldn't spend the money to poll groups as large as they do -- they'd poll several dozen people rather than a thousand.

Even the PIPA pollsters acknowledge this when they explain why they didn't bother to analyze all four original answers to the "al Qaeda linkage" question -- they explain that if they had broken the group down that small they would have had no confidence in the results. And note that the subgroups of all four choices in the "linkage" options were far, far larger than 40 people.

This is also why in many of the subdivisions of questions PIPA doesn't mention the PBS/NPR group's results at all.

...it does nothing to change the fact that the PBS/NPR respondents got the questions wrong FAR less often than FOX viewers--by a statistical spread more than wide enough to be statistically significant.

You overlook the fact that the error rate in a group of 240 respondents (the FOX group) is substantially less than the error rate in a group of 40 respondents (PBS). So when a FOX result of 32% with an error rate of ?5% (for example) is compared to a PBS answer of 16% with an error rate of ? 11%, statistically speaking the results are identical.

Finally, the sample in question (June to September) for which we are given data on what percentage uses PBS/NPR is composed of 3334 people. 3% of 3334 amounts to 100 people, not 40 as you claim. So yes, I did the math myself, and it turned out that I had very good reason not to trust you, just as I have very good reasons not to give much credence to your toothless claim that the wording of the questionnaire renders all of its findings invalid across the board.

You are correct that 3% of 3334 is 100. But the analysis of the three key questions wasn't run on 3334 respondents, but on 1362. Three per cent of 1362 is 41 people. I have a hard time accepting that a sample of less than one PBS/NPR person per state is an accurate representation of all the PBS/NPR afficianados in America.

I'm sure English translations are available.

They are available at Gallup, but only if you buy a one year subscription for $95. They may be available elsewhere for less, or even for free. I sure hope so.

I've read the methodology for the Baghdad poll conducted by Gallup (see their site: www.gallup.com) and it was nowhere near their own methodology for US polls, not by a long shot. It would be nice, you know, if you actually provided some evidence once in a while to back some up of your claims. I'm getting a bit tired of being the only one here who actually gives a damn about providing evidence instead of mere rhetoric.

Actually, I read the Gallup site too (thanks again for giving us the link) and it turns out their selection of respondents was identical to that used in the US, except that rather than using randomized phone numbers within representative geographical areas, they used randomized addresses. This is exactly the same method they used up until the mid-eighties in the US as well. From the Gallup website --

"By necessity, the earliest polls were conducted in-person, with Gallup interviewers fanning out across the country, knocking on Americans? doors. This was the standard method of interviewing for nearly fifty years, from about 1935 to the mid 1980s, and it was a demonstrably reliable method. Gallup polls across the twelve presidential elections held between 1936 and 1984 were highly accurate, with the average error in Gallup?s final estimate of the election being less than 3 percentage points.

"By 1986, a sufficient proportion of American households had at least one telephone to make telephone interviewing a viable and substantially less expensive alternative to the in-person method. And by the end of the 1980s the vast majority of Gallup?s national surveys were being conducted by telephone."

So if we are to discard the Baghdad polls as being worthless, clearly we must also discard every single pre-1986 Gallup poll taken in America.

Here's what Gallup says about the accuracy of their Baghdad poll --

"The strict, probability-based sample used by Gallup to conduct this survey projects with scientific accuracy to all adults (aged 18 and older) residing in urban areas within the governorate of Baghdad. All 1,178 interviews were conducted face-to-face, in the privacy of the respondent?s own home.

"Interviewing was conducted during the period of Aug. 28 through Sept. 4, 2003. The cooperation rate exceeded 97%, that is, fewer than 3% of those we contacted refused to be interviewed. Average interview length was 70 minutes. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is ?2.7%."

However, if you still wish to claim Gallup's Baghdad poll is invalid, I certainly can't stop you.

pinky


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2037739 - 10/23/03 08:17 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Okay. Finally have more or less steady electrical power and am getting kicked off the Net far less frequently. Here is the rest of my response:

infidelGOD writes:

what "non-existent" poll are you speaking of?

The non-existent poll of the 190 countries in the world.

it's ironic since your whole argument rests on this hypothetical poll of PBS viewers

The PIPA poll is not hypothetical, it is just statistically meaningless. The three questions in the poll are insufficient to determine a causal relationship. The questions do not try to determine what people believe to be fact. And the sample size of a whopping 40 people (the PBS/NPR crowd used in the subset of the whole) is not statistically representative of PBS/NPR viewers. The PBS/NPR "findings" in the PIPA poll have no more validity than a "hypothetical" one.

not having had a TV for sixteen years, I understand if you are a little bit out of touch on this, but we can "know" things without relying on rigorous polls.

No, one cannot. One can get impressions. One can form opinions. One can even be willing to bet their entire fortune. But one cannot know how the population of the world feels in every single country in the world without some reliable survey of all of them.

anyone who has followed the news in the last six months would "know" that most of the world was opposed to the war.

I follow virtually nothing but print (internet) media, and I follow current affairs a lot more closely than the average television watcher does. I know things about current events you don't -- not because I am any more intelligent than you, but simply because due to my passion for politics and the amount of spare time I have. I spend hours each day combing through multiple sources. For example, I have seen all the Iraq polls, you have not. Even the authors of the PIPA study have shown that those who get the majority of their news from print (like me) hold less false impressions than any of the TV watchers. And don't say that the PBS/NPR crowd holds even less, because as I have pointed out already, the PBS/NPR figures are meaningless because the sample size is too small to give reliable indications. Even the authors of the PIPA poll tacitly admit this, since in many of their sub-analyses they don't even mention the PBS crowd -- because it is too small to be subdivided.

Yet even with all the searching I do, I don't know (yet) that the majority of the countries in the world opposed the invasion. I strongly suspect that is the case, and I would even be willing to bet on it, but the person who decides the winner of the bet had better be able to provide the actual numbers, not just just say "it's common knowledge, dude -- you lose the bet."

I understand, since you rely entirely on the internet and print media for your news, you haven't been introduced to the wonders of telecommunications in modern America. you're ignoring the fact that it's the primary source of news for most Americans (unfortunately). if you haven't had a TV in sixteen years, I don't imagine you're too media savvy and I'm afraid you are working with imcomplete information... like you said: "I lack the necessary evidence of my own senses to come to any conclusion at all on the matter"

I do get a chance to watch TV news anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks a year in my visits to Canada, but it is true that even then I spend only maybe two hours a week watching TV news, while I spend more than an hour every day with newspapers. I am not completely ignorant about TV news -- I just find it woefully inadequate for anyone who wishes to get more than a few soundbites on any given topic. I do admit I am completely ignorant about FOX News on TV, though -- I have never seen a single FOX News broadcast, and precious few CNN ones.

actually, I don't take any poll as fact.

Except, apparently, the PIPA poll which purports to prove that watching FOX News makes you more misinformed than if you didn't. Can we say "double standard"?

yeah it wasn't that long ago, so you should have no trouble remembering that Frace was hardly the only country to be opposed to it. Russia, China, Germany were also opposed to name a few.

Four out of fifteen of the Security Council members said in advance they would vote against it. One said outright they would veto it no matter what. What about the other eleven?

the emailer makes a flawed assumption that his questions are equivalent to the ones in the original poll. most of his questions are asking for opinions. think about it. when you ask someone if the toppling of the statue was staged, you are asking them for their opinion - you are asking for their interpretation of the event. when you ask them if WMD have been found in Iraq, you are testing them on their knowledge of FACTS.

Apart from the fact that the PIPA poll was not asking people about facts, or even about opinions for that matter, but about their impressions, to say that most of his questions can't be answered factually is incorrect. For the sake of argument, let's pretend for the next few minutes your take on the toppling statue question is correct. What about the other three?

"Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?"

No, Bush claimed no such thing. That is not opinion, that is fact. You can weasel on for pages and pages about the "mood of the media" or the "interpretation" or "people's impressions", but that doesn't alter the fact that he never claimed it.

"Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?"

Yes. Not only does every available poll confirm this, so does logic and common sense.

"Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?"

No. By any measure you care to name, the amount of arms sold to Hussein by the US was not a significant amount. To call an anthrax culture "significant amounts of arms" is ludicrous.

The e-mailer's questions are not "fundamentally different" at all. They are -- in the context of misperception or false impression or whatever you want to call it -- fundamentally identical. They all deal with widely-reported and often-discussed aspects of the same meta-topic -- reasons to invade (or not invade) Iraq.

and if you think that it wasn't staged, because it really "happened", you're completely missing the point...

No. I won't bother repeating this all over again, since you seem honestly incapable of grasping the definition of "staged" provided by your own dictionary. Re-read what I wrote, compare what I said to what the dictionary says about "stage", and if you still disagree with me, so be it.

there is some debate as to whether the Bush administration tried to portray Iraq as an imminent threat.

There you go again with the "wiggle room" bit. The e-mailer's question did not ask: "Did the Bush administration try to portray Iraq as an imminent threat?" The e-mailer's question was much more narrowly worded, and asked for a judgment of fact, not of opinion -- "Did Bush (not the Bush administration) claim (not try to portray) before the war that the threat to the US was imminent?" Yet you claim that the respondents may properly ignore the question being asked and instead answer one which was not asked.

But you adamantly refuse to allow the respondents the same latitude when it comes to the "close working relationship" question. Oh, no! -- there the respondents must stick rigidly and scrupulously to the precise wording of the question when giving their impressions. You claim this is not applying a double standard. Perhaps some of the readers of this thread see otherwise.

and since you haven't had a TV in sixteen years, I don't think you really understand the relationship between the government and the media in 21st century America, and how TV plays a huge role in the government getting it's message out to the people. most people in this country rely on TV for their news, so if you didn't have access to one, you wouldn't really know how Iraq was portrayed before the war now would you? let me get back to what you said which I think is appropriate here: "I lack the necessary evidence of my own senses to come to any conclusion at all on the matter"...

And, from lower down in the post --

you call that neutrality? I call it operating from a position of complete ignorance. you haven't had TV in sixteen years, yet you feel qualified to speak about bias in the media, based on what? what you read on the internet?

For convenience, I will combine the above two comments and address them together below --

Sigh. You still don't get it. I am not commenting on the bias of the media here. I am commenting on the inappropriate conclusions drawn by Myerson. I don't need to know anything at all about FOX News or PBS in order to point out the flaws in the poll.

Let me try to explain this. A scientist reading a paper reporting on an experiment or series of experiments may never have seen the phenomenon described in the paper. He need have no prior knowledge on the subject of the experiment in order to judge the validity of the experiment, because he does know experimental techniques, investigational protocols and statistical analysis. He knows about proper design of experiments.

This is how bogus scientific papers get exposed, and is the purpose of the "peer review" process. Scientists with a pet theory can unknowingly overlook things in their eagerness to support their theory. Sometimes it is deliberate, more often it is not, but the end result is the same -- faultily designed experiments whose results are misleading or outright false.

In this situation I am in the position of the impartial peer reviewing the poll, because I have no axe to grind either way. The PIPA folks are the eager scientists with a pet theory. Your problem is that since you are all too familiar with American TV news and as a human being are subject to the same opinionation all of us are, you have preconceptions which you must set aside or they will get in the way of your objective review. You have seen FOX News, have disdain for it and disdain for the people who watch it, so you are more likely to brush aside my legitimate objections to the faulty methodology because you are not just looking at the report, you are also (unavoidably) subconsciously reviewing a mental image of all the FOX pundits such as Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly who set your teeth on edge, and your mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging neighbor who is a rabid Rush Limbaugh fan. I have no such images to set aside -- I have just the poll statistics and the comments of the researchers to go on.

You would be in a precisely similar situation if you were reviewing an analogous survey having to do with the -- oh, I don't know -- prevalence of land crab infestation in banana groves in the Dominican Republic. This is a topic on which I would have a very hard time remaining objective because I have a lot of negative experience with it and have my own firm opinions on the matter which I would have difficulty setting aside. I could do it, but it would take effort. You wouldn't even have to expend the effort. Now do you get my point?

now I know that you'll say the same thing about the question of Iraq and al qaida having a close working relationship, that it is also open to different opinions...(snip)...you are simply misinformed.

The thing is, the PIPA folks go further than saying there was no close working relationship. They deny categorically that there were any links at all, and that is a patently false belief on their part. Here is what they say --
Quote:

Despite the evidence that no evidence of any links has been found, the percentages choosing each position have remained statistically constant, varying only within a few percentage points.



Clearly the PIPA folks themselves are operating under a misconception, and it has colored their interpretation of the data. There have been plenty of links uncovered and reported. Here are a few articles detailing these links:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=10288

http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/003/033jgqyi.asp

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/238dkpee.asp

There are more out there, but these will do for now.

and my point was that the question of whether the statue scene was staged isn't a question of fact, it's a question of interpretation.

Only if one interpets the dictionary definition of "staged" incorrectly.

it is your contention that PBS viewers would be as "misinformed" as FOX news viewer if given these questions in a hypothetical poll.

These and others, yes. Especially if the poll was worded identically to the PIPA poll, asking for impressions -- whether they had any confidence in the correctness of the impressions or not; whether they even knew anything about the subject matter or not.

look at them objectively and you'll see that they aren't of the same variety. the emailer asks for opinions to try to prove that PBS viewers are misinformed on facts.

No he does not ask for opinions. Covered above. You're repeating yourself.

I think it can be argued that selling precursors to biological weapons can be considered a sale of a significant amount of arms.

An anthrax culture is a "significant amount of arms"? Uh huh.

you have to admit that these are really poor questions posed by the emailer. this kind of stuff belongs in an opinion poll, to find out how people saw things, not to find out how misinformed they are.

Bingo!!! That's exactly what I am saying about the questions asked by the PIPA people -- "just give us your impressions, please -- don't worry that you may have no confidence in the impression. Hell, don't even worry if you know nothing about it at all -- just give us your impression anyway." Come on, dude! That isn't even an [opinion[/] poll, fa cryin' out loud.

now we know that there were other questions.

Yes, and they cherry-picked just three out of at least seven questions of "fact" they asked. They don't even show the wording of at least one of the unused questions (the one about the Muslim world).

does that invalidate the findings for you?

Even more so. I take it you haven't bothered to read the full report yet. If you had, you would be understanding this a whole lot better.

no that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that FOX news is biased.

And this makes them different from CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and NPR exactly how? Besides, bias is not the same as inaccurate.

I normally don't ask for links but maybe first you should provide me with links proving that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed".

Until PIPA or some other group does a followup poll which consists of more than 40 PBS/NPR respondents, obviously I cannot.

can you tell me where he claimed there was causality? maybe you misread this sentence: "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong." this just sounds like he's reporting the findings of the poll, which showed exactly that.

Incorrect. The actual findings of the poll show the reverse -- the more likely you are to hold a mistaken impression, the higher the chances are that you will watch FOX News.

not at all. maybe you skimmed what I said earlier but I said that liberals hold some misperceptions of their own. my contention is the same as the original article's - that FOX news viewers are the most misinformed.

Again, that is not what the poll shows. It shows there is a correlation between the likelihood of a person holding false impressions on three carefully selected questions and also being a supporter of the invasion of Iraq. It shows a correlation between the likelihood of a person holding false impressions on three questions and saying they will vote for Bush in the next election. It shows a correlation between the likelihood of a person holding false impressions and being relatively uneducated. It shows a correlation between the likelihood of a person holding false impressions on three questions and watching network news. And of the last correlation, the CBS watchers fared significantly worse than FOX watchers on two questions other than the three selected. Why were not all five questions included, then? Clearly the researchers had the data for all five. Could it be that if all five were included, FOX would come off looking better than with only the three? I leave it to the reader to decide.

and you feel qualified to talk about "standard techniques used by just about every news segment producer in the world"? you certaintly write as if you know what you're talking about. from what I've read I would have thought that you were completely immersed in American media and that you know a great deal about how the media works, but I wonder just how much you've missed in these last sixteen years. no offence man, but living in the Dominican, without a TV for the last sixteen years, you don't exactly have your finger on the pulse of America.

As I pointed out, I do watch TV for about seven weeks or so each year. And the deliberate selection of camera angles to emphasize or de-emphasize certain things isn't a newly-discovered technique that suddenly came into vogue in the last sixteen years. It has been one of the first things they teach you as a cameraman -- even a still photographer -- for about a century now.

and you wouldn't really know how Iraq was portrayed by the administration, or how the statue scene was portrayed.

I didn't see it, but I have read seemingly endless critiques of it, seen blurry photoshopped images with no date or time stamp, read endless discussions about it, and as I repeat, I have been involved in similar demonstrations where exactly the same techniques are used. It still doesn't change the fact that it wasn't staged.

As for CNN showing nothing but closeups, that's not what some people are saying. Here's just one comment of many from a guy who saw it -- there are dozens of similar threads out there on hundreds of blogs --

http://reason.com/hitandrun/001326.shtml
Fyodor,

I ended up watching the whole thing live on CNN International. There was no shortage of wide shots of the area and, by my (admittedly amateur) estimate, I'd say the peak crowd was 300-400 (and the average was in the range of 100-200). There certainly wasn't any attempt at deception in the live coverage since the anchors commented on the relatively modest size of the crowd and attributed it to a combination of a) this being a word of mouth gathering in a city with no power, b) sunset was approaching and the people of Baghdad were not unreasonably concerned about being out after dark, and c) there were more than a few ongoing firefights in the city including one at Baghdad University a few miles away (which was covered via split screen much of the time) and a couple of shots fired incidents in the vicinity of the statue which the soldiers periodically reacted to.

The charge of deception I guess stems from the close-up shots of the statue falling which appeared later in the day. However, any shot which captured the statue in any detail would necessarily have shown the bulk of the crowd and not the empty square around them.

Tom
Posted by: Tom on April 15, 2003 12:45 PM

but you seem absolutely convinced that you have the "correct" version of things. I find that very interesting.

By the commonly accepted definition of "staged" (including the definition you yourself provided), the event wasn't staged. That's all I have ever said.

if you rely on the print media and the internet for all your news, your view of the world may be a little bit incomplete...

Not according to the PIPA survey. They found the print readers had the most accurate impressions of any group. And I am a print reader.

... or at the very least, your views on American media may not be entirely accurate.

Again, I make no judgments on the American media. Why do you have such a hard time grasping this fundamental point? I have always been commenting on the shoddiness of Myerson's article, and now that EchoVortex has provided the link to the actual PIPA survey, on the shoddiness of the survey itself. That survey was never designed to determine which news network is the one most likely to give false impressions -- the poll designer himself says so in so many words. It was not his original intent to discover which one is the shittiest -- it became a secondary "add-on" subtask halfway through the information-gathering process. Perhaps this explains the sloppy work he did in that area. *shrugs*

if you don't agree with his premise, do you agree with the results of the poll?

I disagree with any attempt to interpret the results of that three question poll as showing that FOX News is more inaccurate a representation of world events than any other US TV news network.

the original poll proves that FOX news viewers are misinformed, at least on those questions.

Which means exactly doodly squat. I could put together a set of three questions where FOX viewers would do far better. As a matter of fact, the PIPA researchers already did, they just chose not to emphasize the fact.

you asserted that PBS viewers would be equally misinformed, if given a different set of questions.

Yep. On one of the questions (one of the ones PIPA chose not to include), just 24% of FOX viewers got it wrong. I guarantee I could put together three questions, ask a group of 240 randomly chosen PBS/NPR afficianados (the same number as FOX viewers in the PIPA survey) to just give me their impressions, whether they had any confidence in their answers, whether they knew anything about it or not -- just their impressions -- and get a figure higher than 24% on at least one of them. So could you if you thought about it for a while.

You are missing the key point here -- the folks that answered those questions "wrongly" aren't even "misinformed". After all, they weren't asked to pass judgment on the truth or falsehood of an assertion. They were asked to give their impression or something. I hate to point out the obvious, but saying "I get the impression that people who take LSD may give birth to defective children" is not even close to saying "I know for a fact that LSD-eaters have deformed children."

Even the PIPA guys admit this. From their report -- "However, it should be noted that when respondents say that something is likely -- especially those who just say that it is somewhat likely -- it does not mean they have come to the conclusion that it is the case." How much plainer can you state it than that?

There may be a way to prove that a given US news network (maybe even FOX for all I know) distributes more misinformation than the others, but it certainly cannot be proven with this PIPA survey. That was my contention before ever seeing the survey, just by the limited number of questions asked and the nature of the three questions (all three falling on the same side of the same single issue). Now that I have read through the entire survey a few times, I am even more certain of my original statement -- the conclusions drawn from the add-on part of that specific survey are meaningless. To steal EchoVortex's phrase, excess verbiage, nothing more.

pinky


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2038560 - 10/23/03 11:50 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

If that is not what they wanted to know, then how can you claim the answers to the questions asked demonstrate people believe "facts" which aren't true? They demonstrate no such thing. They merely demonstrate impressions.

As it happens, "impressions" are precisely, and unfortunately, what most voters rely on when deciding to support a policy or elect a candidate. For that reason, impressions are politically significant, and media play a huge role in shaping them.

My point is that if they had left out these pleas to "answer no matter what", and especially if they had included the standard "don't know" option, the percentages would have been different. Rather than 35% answering "A", 25% answering "B", 37% answering "C", and 3% deciding against instructions to skip the question, the numbers could have been 28% A, 11% B, 31% C, and 30% "don't know".

Yes, it is quite likely that more people would have answered "don't know." But what you are overlooking is that all respondents were given the same instructions, so there is no reason to believe that the ratio of misperceptions (or false impressions, if you prefer) would have been any different. FOX viewers would STILL hold false impressions at a higher percentage than viewers of ABC, CNN, etc. If the pollsters had given those instructions only to the FOX viewers and not to the others, you would have a point.

Here we are talking about people who are not even committing themselves to saying it is "somewhat likely", but people who say, "I get the impression that..."

Which still doesn't change the fact that people get those impressions from somewhere and that those impressions are politically significant.

You seem to have no difficulty claiming the government and their willing lackeys in the media use special wording to "manipulate" people into holding false impressions or even into accepting as fact things which are false.

This is just a side note, but it's rather disconcerting to see a self-designated libertarian constantly rushing to the defense of a massive government, especially an administration that has a track record of playing it fast and loose with the facts and rescinding civil liberties. Are you saying the Bush administration is completely trustworthy? Are you saying they never attempt to manipulate people into holding false impressions?

"However, when it comes to modern-day attitude surveys conducted by most of the major national polling organizations, question wording is probably the greatest source of bias and error in the data, followed by question order. Writing a clear, unbiased question takes great care and discipline, as well as extensive knowledge about public opinion."

You still haven't pointed out any problems in the wording of the questions themselves, only the wording of the instructions. Most of the questions gave respondents a range of choices as to what they thought reality to be. For example, in the al-Qaeda/Saddam link question, here were the choices:

Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks

There was no connection at all

A few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials

Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks


Despite having four completely distinct choices, 22% of the respondents still went straight for the first option--that Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the attacks--despite the fact that this is the choice that is factually most indefensible. This is not a problem with the question, which gives a range of possibilities, but with the ignorance (or false impressions, if you prefer) of the respondents.

You overlook the fact that the error rate in a group of 240 respondents (the FOX group) is substantially less than the error rate in a group of 40 respondents (PBS). So when a FOX result of 32% with an error rate of ?5% (for example) is compared to a PBS answer of 16% with an error rate of ? 11%, statistically speaking the results are identical.

Well, let's see: 45% of FOX viewers believed all three of the whoppers vs. 4% of the PBS/NPR crowd. Even if we assume an ample margin of error of ?7% for the FOX group, we would still need a margin of error of ?34% for the PBS/NPR crowd for there to be even a chance that they're the same. Not likely. The difference between the two groups is still statistically significant.

Even if the PBS/NPR results are not completely reliable, there is still the fact that the FOX crowd performed worse than every single other group as well, including groups like CNN and NBC, whose sample sizes were roughly similar. There is more than enough statistical certitude to be able to say that FOX was clearly, irrefutably, the worst of the bunch.

You are correct that 3% of 3334 is 100. But the analysis of the three key questions wasn't run on 3334 respondents, but on 1362. Three per cent of 1362 is 41 people. I have a hard time accepting that a sample of less than one PBS/NPR person per state is an accurate representation of all the PBS/NPR afficianados in America.

You're right, my bad. That fact was nestled within the report and I overlooked it. I cannot argue that the results for PBS/NPR are ironclad, but once again, the sheer span of the difference between them and the FOX group on many questions is STILL enough, despite the small sample size, to be significant. If the differences were in the single digits, they wouldn't be. And I repeat, once again, that the FOX crowd performed worse than EVERYBODY else, and that everybody else is certainly a large enough sample to be significant.

Actually, I read the Gallup site too (thanks again for giving us the link) and it turns out their selection of respondents was identical to that used in the US, except that rather than using randomized phone numbers within representative geographical areas, they used randomized addresses. This is exactly the same method they used up until the mid-eighties in the US as well.

You are omitting one absolutely crucial difference: Gallup polls in the US are nationwide whereas this was limited to urban Baghdad. In fact, the pollsters made a special effort to avoid the semi-rural outskirts of Baghdad because they just wanted this to be an urban Baghdad poll. I don't question the results for Baghdad, whatever they were (I haven't seen the actual numbers, although I understand that the results, when examined closely, are rather more equivocal than the administration tries to make them out to be), I simply question whether they are true of the entire Iraqi population. If you recall, we're talking about "Iraqis" not just "Baghdadis." It would help to see the actual questions as well, but since Gallup insists on hiding them from everybody except those willing to cough up $100, we'll have to leave that in the air for now.

Do you have the results of the Gallup poll, by the way? There must be a (free) link to them somewhere.

Finally, you have YET to address the fact that there was a positive correlation between the amount of attention that people whose main news source was FOX paid to the news and the percentage by which they got those three questions wrong. In other words, the more attention they paid to FOX, the more in error they were. I'm really eager to see how you try to explain that one away.


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OfflinePhred
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2040039 - 10/24/03 03:06 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

As it happens, "impressions" are precisely, and unfortunately, what most voters rely on when deciding to support a policy or elect a candidate. For that reason, impressions are politically significant, and media play a huge role in shaping them.

Yes, I am aware of that. For example, studies have shown for year that taller political candidates do better than shorter ones. Any sales manager will tell you that taller salespeople (on average) sell more than short ones, too. There was even a study I saw somewhere in the last month (sorry, didn't bookmark it) that showed your height has as much to do with your lifetime earnings potential (in America at least) as your level of education, and in some fields of work actually has a greater effect than education. For whatever reason, more people prefer dealing with tall people than with short ones. This is based on nothing more than perception.

But that is not what we are debating here. I have said that the study is not designed well enough to draw a firm conclusion that watching network news makes you dumber. Now you are trying to switch it over to which political candidate the news watcher is more likely to vote for. Earlier you were insisting this has to do purely with errors in factual knowledge -- that it didn't matter which facts were involved. Which is it?

Yes, it is quite likely that more people would have answered "don't know." But what you are overlooking is that all respondents were given the same instructions, so there is no reason to believe that the ratio of misperceptions (or false impressions, if you prefer) would have been any different.

Yes, there is a reason. Those who felt more certain of their opinions would have chosen the "don't know" option less frequently. There are significant differences in the demographic makeup of the network news viewers vs print readers -- political affiliation, level of education, importance of religious beliefs -- and even among the various network news viewers. For example, CBS viewers had some odd anomalies compared to the rest. Do Republicans have more confidence in their opinions than Democrats do, or is the reverse the case? Do less-educated people have more confidence in their opinions than better-educated ones or is it the other way around? I'll admit that I don't know which is the case, since I have seen no relevant studies on the issue. So can we confidently claim that a more Republican, more religiously dogmatic, less-educated group (FOX viewers) will say "I don't know" in exactly the same ratio as a more Democrat, more secular, better-educated group (PBS/NPR)? No, we cannot. We can guess, but we have already agreed that speculation won't cut the mustard in this thread.

Which still doesn't change the fact that people get those impressions from somewhere and that those impressions are politically significant.

See my above comments re political significance vs questions of fact.

This is just a side note, but it's rather disconcerting to see a self-designated libertarian constantly rushing to the defense of a massive government...

Where on earth do you get that from? I am defending neither the media nor government. I merely point out your inconsistency in believing (probably correctly) that media commentators manipulate words in a biased manner yet the authors of the study did not.

You still haven't pointed out any problems in the wording of the questions themselves, only the wording of the instructions.

The instruction has the same import that the question does. For whatever reason, you are convinced that the percentages would have been identical whether the instructions read as they did or if they had cautioned the respondents to answer only the ones they were 100% sure of. I dispute that contention. I cannot see why you are being so stubborn on this point. Surely you don't believe you will get the same answer to the following two questions :

"Is it your impression -- whether you are confident of your answer or not, whether you have any knowledge of his actual statement or not -- that Bush, in his State of the Union address, claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to the US?"

and

"Are you 100% certain that Bush, in his State of the Union address, claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to the US?"

Most of the questions gave respondents a range of choices as to what they thought reality to be.

And yet in PIPA's detailed analysis, that range of questions was ignored, with the authors instead deliberately choosing to focus on a single option: and not on the option which had the highest percentage response, but on the one they judged most egregiously wrong.

For example, in the al-Qaeda/Saddam link question, here were the choices:
Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks
There was no connection at all
A few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials
Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks
Despite having four completely distinct choices, 22% of the respondents still went straight for the first option--that Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the attacks--despite the fact that this is the choice that is factually most indefensible. This is not a problem with the question, which gives a range of possibilities, but with the ignorance (or false impressions, if you prefer) of the respondents.


And I still say the percentage would have been different given different instructions and the standard "I don't know" option. You choose to believe otherwise. There is no point in discussing this further, since there is no way of verifying whose position is correct. We can spin our wheels for months on this one.

Well, let's see: 45% of FOX viewers believed all three of the whoppers vs. 4% of the PBS/NPR crowd.

A group of 41 is too small to obtain reliable data from.

The difference between the two groups is still statistically significant.

A group of 41 is too small to even think of using the term "statistically significant". I wish Rhizoid would look at this thread. He knows a lot more about statistical analysis than I do. He could probably give us a much better idea of the margin of error.

Even if the PBS/NPR results are not completely reliable, there is still the fact that the FOX crowd performed worse than every single other group as well, including groups like CNN and NBC, whose sample sizes were roughly similar.

That is not correct either. Re-read the results of the CBS group. In at least two other questions (not the three questions on which PIPA focused) they did worse than the FOX group. As I said in my reply to infidelGOD, I suspect this determined which three questions PIPA focused on. Why not report on all five questions? Obviously they had the necessary data. Could it be that including the results of all five questions would have undermined the conclusion they were determined to draw?

I cannot argue that the results for PBS/NPR are ironclad, but once again, the sheer span of the difference between them and the FOX group on many questions is STILL enough, despite the small sample size, to be significant. If the differences were in the single digits, they wouldn't be.

So you say. I am not willing to say the same. Neither of us are statistical experts, so this is one that cannot be resolved without outside help.

You are omitting one absolutely crucial difference: Gallup polls in the US are nationwide whereas this was limited to urban Baghdad.

Yes, I know. Neither Gallup nor I are claiming that the poll deals with anything other than Baghdad. The previous poll of the other three areas (I believe it was a Zogby poll, but I can't remember for sure) around Basra, Mosul, and the other area whose name escapes me at the moment, had even higher approval rates than the Baghdad poll.

Do you have the results of the Gallup poll, by the way? There must be a (free) link to them somewhere.

Links to articles reporting on both the Baghdad poll and the Basra/Mosul/whatever poll have been posted in several threads here in this forum. Sorry, but I am on a borrowed laptop at the moment. My main computer is waiting for a new motherboard. Until then I have no access to my archived links. You'll have to do a search of the forum to find them.
'
Finally, you have YET to address the fact that there was a positive correlation between the amount of attention that people whose main news source was FOX paid to the news and the percentage by which they got those three questions wrong. In other words, the more attention they paid to FOX, the more in error they were. I'm really eager to see how you try to explain that one away.

People with preconceptions tend to look for support for these preconceptions and ignore the rest. In the case of FOX, this may be a rabid O'Reilly or Hannity or Limbaugh fan who never misses one of their shows, and uses their opinions and commentary as factual support for his point of view. These guys reinforce what he is already predisposed to believe. We have seen this same phenomenon demonstrated repeatedly in this forum. As just one example, not so long ago we had posts from someone who obviously spends a lot of time searching for info on points of political interest -- this person pays a lot of attention to news items on areas of interest to this person. This is demonstrated by the large number of links this person can provide at the drop of a hat. This person is an enthusiastic activist.

Yet this person was flabbergasted to find that the Bush administration had never claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks, and that Bush had never said there was an imminent threat to the US from Iraq. I can guarantee you this person is not a FOX watcher. Here we have someone who has a great deal of interest in the goings-on in the world who was for months certain of two things which were in fact false. Now let's look at FOX viewers:

From what I have read in this forum, many people here are convinced that many FOX watchers (as a group) are similar to the person I described above -- they are more than just casual news watchers, they love their FOX; they are fans of FOX -- they are enthusiasts; finally there is a news outlet that appears to think the same way they do. There seem to be more FOX viewers who fit this description than say ABC news viewers. Since I have never seen FOX or met a FOX News fan, I bow to the superior knowledge of the others posting here; I am willing to believe there is a qualitative difference in the personalities of FOX watchers vs watchers of other network news shows. And, there appears to be something in the makeup of many FOX watchers that makes them more prone to certain preconceptions -- just as Noam Chomsky fans are more prone to certain other preconceptions.

The point is that this kind of enthusiast (or political junkie or however you want to describe them) naturally tends to pay closer attention to thing political than the guy who has the tv on as background noise while he eats his dinner, yet just because he pays more attention does not guarantee that his preconceptions will be altered. Let's be realistic: he doesn't pay attention in order to have his beliefs proven wrong, but to have them vindicated.

I repeat my premise that given a different set of questions -- a set of questions which fall on both sides of a given political issue rather than the three lopsided questions cherry-picked by PIPA -- the FOX group would do better; not necessarily because they know more about it, but because the correct answer fits with their preconceived worldview. I realize you will not accept my premise lacking another poll, so there is really no point dwelling further on it.

pinky


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
illusion

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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2041342 - 10/25/03 12:56 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

How much more plainly can the pollsters emphasize they are not asking for a rigorous examination of personal certainties? Hell, they are not even coming close to asking for a judgment on truth or falsehood -- it's almost the same instructions a psychiatrist gives you at the beginning of one of those word-association psychological tests where he says, "I'm gonna say a word and I want you to answer me with another word -- the first one that pops into your head.".

that is complete BS, this poll was nothing like a word association test. it specifically asks for peoples impressions so they can compare them to reality and determine how misinformed they are. so what if they ask for impressions? how does that invalidate the findings? if you have the "impression" that there WMD have been found in Iraq, aren't you holding the wrong impression or perception or whatever you want to call it? the results are still useful in finding peoples misperceptions. the phrasing of the question and the instructions don't really change anything. this is normally how polls are done.

Clearly this questionnaire was not designed to ascertain the level of factual knowledge the respondents held on various aspects of the Iraq invasion

no it was clearly designed to find out peoples impressions, perceptions and misperceptions. I thought this was obvious.

So the entire PBS/NPR crowd combined is 40 people (do the math yourself if you don't trust me), and falls within the range of statistical "noise" in any event.

oh my, I see we haven't studied our statistics, (not so much statistics, this is actually simple logic). here's how it works. let's say that 10% of a group of a 1000 people is randomly sampled in a poll. and in that sample group of 100 people, 5 watch X and 95 watch Z. the margin of error is the same for both regardless of their size if they both represent the same percentage of the whole.

Let me try this again -- a sample size of 40 people cannot give you anywhere close to the same degree of accuracy as a sample size of 1362 people

a sample size of 40 people is just as accurate as a sample size of 800 if both represent the same precentages of the whole, for example, if the 40 represented a group of 4000 and the 800 represented a group of 80000.

so there goes that theory...

I'm afraid the results still stand. it just so happens that there is a smaller sample of NPR/PBS viewers because there are less of them. if there were equal numbers of FOX news viewers and NPR/PBS viewers, and they used different sized samples, you might have a point. but using a small sample to represent a small group is natural. I know you're going to keep trying to rip apart this poll, but this is pretty much how polls are done. there's nothing logically wrong with the methodology, and the phrasing of the questions tells you exactly what kind of perceptions or "impressions" people have, which is exactly what the poll is trying to find out.

And I don't need the Iraq polls to confirm what I already know -- that the Iraqis are in favor. I used logic and common sense as well as reports from liberated Iraqis. You can't seriously believe the majority of Iraqis opposed being set free.

ummm... yeah. I'm sure logic told you that Iraqis wanted freedom, but I thought we were talking about Iraqis wanting an American invasion? you seemed to have confused the two.

To date, the largest number of countries where we can actually check "opposed" and "in favor" is the Gallup poll included in one of EchoVortex's links which totalled something like 62 countries -- roughly a third of the total.

there are more poll results in page 8 of the PIPA report, but once again let me say that I don't need polls to tell me that the world was opposed. this is known to everyone. even you agree that the world was opposed. EVERYONE agrees on this. there is no debate. and it doesn't matter if it's known as a fact to you since the only thing that would convince you is poll results from 190 countries and I don't think we'll be getting that any time soon.

don't call it a fact if you don't want to, just call it common knowledge.

But it isn't common knowledge. That's my entire point. I know of nowhere on the Net where one can find such information -- nowhere


It is common knowledge that the world was opposed to the war. just because you can't find this information on the net doesn't mean it's not true. and I feel that you are being rather dishonest with this line of reasoning because in the next sentence you say:

In my opinion, the majority of the world probably did oppose the invasion

so you agree that the world was opposed to the war? doesn't everyone agree on this? never mind if it can be known as a verifiable fact. can we at least say that there is a consensus here that the world was opposed to the war? this is a question that has an answer whether or not you want to accept it as fact. anyone who thinks that "The majority of people in the world favored the US having gone to war" is simply misinformed.

and if you believe that there was worldwide support for the war, "misinformed" is truly the right word for you here.

But I don't believe that. I have already told you the reverse. The point is that I don't know that, and neither do you.


yes I know you don't believe that. that's why I said if you believe... and I was actually referring to the FOX news viewers who did believe it.

If they differ, then I am required to provide proof -- i.e. the validity of the polls held in Iraq. You can't have it both ways.

well if you're going to say that polls out of Iraq prove that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion, then you ARE required to provide proof because you only have the polls to go by (polls which are flawed as I'll explain later). but I never said that polls from around the world prove that the world was opposed to the war. yes these polls do exist and they do suggest strongly that the world was opposed to the war, but I already told you that I don't rely on polls to know this so how am I having things both ways? you keep saying this but you haven't really thought it through. you have a habit of applying the same inflexible standards to different sitiuations. IF I had said that polls prove that the world was opposed, and that was my only piece of evidence, THEN I would be required to provide proof. but I gave other reasons besides polls. but if it's polls you're after, see page 8 of the PIPA report. it doesn't have results from all 190 countries as you're demanding. but it's more than enough to reasonably conclude that the world was opposed to the war. hey at least I have provided polls, even though I didn't really need them to make my case. I have yet to see a single poll from you proving that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion.

First of all, the PBS/NPR crowd is statistically insignificant at a mere 41 people, so all of the conclusions drawn about them are meaningless no matter what form the questions took

incorrect. see above

Secondly, I didn't say the FOX crowd would outperform the PBS/NPR crowd (or the print media readers) on those three questions, but on the e-mailer's questions.

any proof of this?

I don't know if that ratio is a constant -- I suspect that as the groups get ever smaller, the ratio gets larger. I do know, however, that the accuracy swing on a group of a mere 40 people is sufficiently large as to render the results suspect. If this were not the case, pollsters wouldn't spend the money to poll groups as large as they do -- they'd poll several dozen people rather than a thousand.

you seem to be confused here. 40 people is not total the sample size. see above. you seem to think that the only valid comparisons in polls are between groups of identical size where (according to your misperception of the term), the "margin of error" would be the same. it doesn't work that way.

You overlook the fact that the error rate in a group of 240 respondents (the FOX group) is substantially less than the error rate in a group of 40 respondents (PBS). So when a FOX result of 32% with an error rate of ?5% (for example) is compared to a PBS answer of 16% with an error rate of ? 11%, statistically speaking the results are identical.

again. total BS.
you sure are going out of your way to discredit the findings of this poll. try another angle. maybe you'll get it if you keep trying.

I follow virtually nothing but print (internet) media, and I follow current affairs a lot more closely than the average television watcher does. I know things about current events you don't -- not because I am any more intelligent than you, but simply because due to my passion for politics and the amount of spare time I have. I spend hours each day combing through multiple sources.

hey, that's great man. it's good that you're informed, but we're not talking about your misperceptions here (if you have any), we're talking about the misperceptions of FOX news viewers. shouldn't you at least be familiar with TV news if we're going to discuss the impressions that people get from watching it?

actually, I don't take any poll as fact.

Except, apparently, the PIPA poll which purports to prove that watching FOX News makes you more misinformed than if you didn't. Can we say "double standard"?


I don't take that as fact either. it just shows a strong correlation between watching FOX news and holding certain incorrect impressions. that's all. I never claimed there was any causality there. in fact, I recall saying that causality was unprovable either way. whatever man, if you want to put words in my mouth and scream "double standard" go right ahead. if that's all you have left.

Apart from the fact that the PIPA poll was not asking people about facts, or even about opinions for that matter, but about their impressions, to say that most of his questions can't be answered factually is incorrect

ah more word games from you... here's the deal: if your "impressions" don't match the facts, then your impressions are wrong. the word "perception" can be subtituted for "impression" here so that answering these questions wrong would mean you have a "misperception". simple isn't it? if it is your impression or preception or opinion or whatever that WMD have been found in Iraq, guess what? you're WRONG! the FACTS don't match your IMPRESSION. there is nothing wrong with the way those questions are phrased. that is generally how it is done in polls. it asks for peoples impressions to see how closely they match reality - to see how misinformed they are.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend for the next few minutes your take on the toppling statue question is correct. What about the other three?

"Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?"

No, Bush claimed no such thing. That is not opinion, that is fact. You can weasel on for pages and pages about the "mood of the media" or the "interpretation" or "people's impressions", but that doesn't alter the fact that he never claimed it.


this is an entirely subjective question. it is fact that Bush never specifically called Iraq an imminent threat. that much is not in dispute, but it is your opinion that such a claim was never made to the American people - an opinion based on one line in the State of the Union address, which I presume, you read on the internet, while ignoring others things that were said that suggested Iraq was an imminent threat. you have to look beyond your over-reliance on the print media here because when such claims are made, the preferred method of the US goverment is TV. I bet you didn't see the numerous press conferences where president Bush raised the spectre of a mushroom cloud over an American city and said that Iraq was six months away from getting a nuke, or warned us about hundreds of tons of biological and chemical weapons. there was a consistent message from the Bush administration, but if you haven't seen a TV in the last few months, you simply would not be aware of this.

people could decide for themselves if president Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. one line in the State of the Union adress certainly does not settle it, there is a lot more to it which you are not aware of. people will have different opinions on this as they should.

and btw, you claimed that the PBS/NPR audience would do worse (or to put it more accurately, they would hold the "wrong opinion") on this question than FOX news viewers. how did you come to this conclusion? do you have any evidence to back it up? let's not forget that these four questions are hypothetical. we only have the emailer's assumption that the PBS viewer would do worse than the FOX news viewer.

"Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?"

Yes. Not only does every available poll confirm this, so does logic and common sense.


please show me a poll that proves that a majority of Iraqis supported the US invasion. so far all you have are polls from urban Baghdad (which I have yet to see). I imagine you have polls from all of Iraq? don't you? else how are we to know how the majority of Iraqis feel? you see why I don't trust these polls from a warzone? I could have gone to Najaf or Tikrit and come back with results that "prove" the opposite - that the majority of Iraqis did not support the invasion. the country is so divided right now and in such chaos that polls from certain parts of Baghdad can't possibly show you how the majority of Iraqis feel. so I maintain that at this point, it can't be known if the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion. we certainly don't have any polls actually proving this so I don't see how there can be a factual answer to this question.

and think about the question for a minute:
Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?"

the only answer can come from these shoddy polls out of Iraq, and this question is to be asked in a hypothetical poll?... think about that. in a poll designed to determine how misinformed people are, you are asking a question that people would only know if they happened to have seen another poll. is that a fair question to ask to determine misperceptions about key facts in the war? looks like the email author didn't really think this one through.

and once again I must ask what lead you to be believe that the PBS/NPR audience would do any "worse" than FOX news viewers on this question. you're busy trying to question the validity of the PIPA results, but you're leaving some questions in your own assertions unanswered.

"Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?"

No. By any measure you care to name, the amount of arms sold to Hussein by the US was not a significant amount. To call an anthrax culture "significant amounts of arms" is ludicrous.


this question is also subjective. what exactly does he mean by "significant amounts of arms"? could it be that people might interpret this to include the anthrax, since a small amount of anthrax can have a significant potential to kill as Colin Powell argued at the UN not long ago? you don't get to decide what constitutes a "significant amount". people can decide this one for themselves and I'm sure you'll get a range of opinions on this. some would no doubt have the facts wrong as well, perhaps thinking that the US sold lots of conventional arms to Iraq. but once again, you have absolutely no evidence that the PBS/NPR audience would have any more factual misperceptions than FOX news viewers on this question. FOX news viewers might be just as misinformed here for all we know.

and I think you're being rather hypocritical here. a while ago in another thread you were arguing that anthrax cultures = WMD. now you're saying that it's not that big a deal. speaking of having things both ways...

The e-mailer's questions are not "fundamentally different" at all. They are -- in the context of misperception or false impression or whatever you want to call it -- fundamentally identical. They all deal with widely-reported and often-discussed aspects of the same meta-topic -- reasons to invade (or not invade) Iraq.

yes they are fundamentally different. you're just not getting it and you're letting your prejudice show with each post. the difference is that the emailer's questions are subjective. questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged?" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat?" have people on BOTH sides of the debate with different opinions, different interpretations. in fact, those questions HAVE to have subjective answers, unless you insist that there can only be one "correct" interpretation of the events. these questions are not dealing with facts. you have already seen a variety of opinions on this thread about the statue scene and people's different take on it. would you say that someone whose interpretation doesn't match yours is misinformed? no. they would simply be holding a different opinion.

on the other hand, the questions in the original poll, despite how they are phrased, deal with objective content like "have WMD been found" or "is there a close working relationship" where there IS an answer that everyone can agree on. only those on the fringe (and those who are misinformed) would still believe that Iraq had a close relationship with al qaida or believe that WMD have been found. these questions clearly are not asking for opinions or interpretations, they're asking for impressions that either do or do not fit the facts.

this is the critical logical error that the author of the email makes. when he says "imagine an opposite kind of poll" and asks those questions, he assumes that his questions have the same kind of objective answers as in the original poll, then all he does is ask vague, subjective questions which will draw out opinions. and he points to people holding the "incorrect" opinions as proof that they are as "misinformed" as FOX news viewers. ridiculous logic isn't it?

think about it - and this next part is very important - if you're going to make an "opposite kind of poll", you have to ask questions whose answers can be known with the same level of certainty as the answers in the original poll. these questions can't be colored with any subjective interpretations. they have to deal with facts just like in the original otherwise you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from this new poll. this "opposite poll" must have opposite but equivalent questions. it's just simple logic.

if you had applied the same amount of critical thinking to the email as you did to the PIPA study, you would have immediately seen the logical flaw. but I imagine you did what a lot of FOX news viewers do - you read the email, you agreed with it so you neglected to examine it further. you neglected to think critically about it because it confirmed your preconceptions. if something disagrees with your preconceptions, like Myerson's article, you go all out to try to look for any logical flaws (without much success). I wish you would be consistent in your application of logic and skepticism.

No. I won't bother repeating this all over again, since you seem honestly incapable of grasping the definition of "staged" provided by your own dictionary. Re-read what I wrote, compare what I said to what the dictionary says about "stage", and if you still disagree with me, so be it.

once again I have to remind you that you don't get to decide who has the "correct" opinion on this. here's the definition: stage - to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect. are you aware of the huge role that PR plays in our government? are you aware that things are often done "for the cameras"? even that famous image of the soldiers planting the flag at Iwo Jima was staged - it was done for the cameras - for public effect, yes even though it "really happened", it was still staged. and I'm not saying that it's bad what they did. it certainly had the intended symbolic effect. I'm only saying that the whole scene was primarily done for the cameras - for public effect. get it? so you could say "it happened - it wasn't staged" all you want. but that will only be your own stubborn opinion. others will see things differently than you do. and besides, do you know for a fact that the toppling was ordered by the military with absolutely no consideration for public effect? can we safely assume that the military does have these considerations? maybe they ordered the toppling specifically for the cameras of the "embedded" reporters. it isn't completely beyond the realm of possibility that the whole scene was staged - put on for the cameras. in fact, I think this is highly likely.

you seem absolutely convinced that it wasn't staged but your words might have more weight here if you actually saw any live news coverage of the event instead of reading about it on the internet from some guy that saw it. and I still don't get why you believe that the PBS/NPR audience would do "worse" on this question than the FOX news viewer. I know several independently thinking conservatives who believe that the scene was staged. maybe it has nothing to do with idealogy, just your susceptibility to propoganda.

There you go again with the "wiggle room" bit. The e-mailer's question did not ask: "Did the Bush administration try to portray Iraq as an imminent threat?" The e-mailer's question was much more narrowly worded, and asked for a judgment of fact, not of opinion -- "Did Bush (not the Bush administration) claim (not try to portray) before the war that the threat to the US was imminent?" Yet you claim that the respondents may properly ignore the question being asked and instead answer one which was not asked.

But you adamantly refuse to allow the respondents the same latitude when it comes to the "close working relationship" question. Oh, no! -- there the respondents must stick rigidly and scrupulously to the precise wording of the question when giving their impressions. You claim this is not applying a double standard. Perhaps some of the readers of this thread see otherwise.


I'm not asking people to answer a question that was not asked. the question is "Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?". there are people who believe that this is precisely what Bush did. don't you get it? this question is asking for people's opinions of whether or not Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. there is no "fact" here. no right answer, only opinions. like I said earlier, it is fact that Bush never actually called Iraq an imminent threat. but the question of whether or not Bush made the claim is a far different question and one that has a subjective answer. if I say that "it is my opinion that Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat", that doesn't mean I'm misinformed, it means the opposite - it means I've thought about this a great deal and I have formed my opinion, an opinion based on things I've seen on TV, read in the papers and the internet, it will be based on everything that Bush had said leading up to the war, not based on just one line in the State of the Union address.

this question cannot possibly have an objective answer but the question about the "close working relationship" has a real, non-subjective answer based on factual evidence (or lack thereof). just look at the content of the question itself, there is very little room for interpretation. and everyone is in agreement on this, a few weeks ago Bush cabinet members were going on the Sunday news programs like Meet the Press to disavow any connection between Iraq an al qaida. of course, you wouldn't be aware of this either.. but anyway, there is agreement here, righties, liberals and everyone in between agree that there was no close working relationship. this is a fact for all intents and purposes. even you agree that there was no close relationship. if there was any kind of debate about this question. if many people were claiming that there was a close working relationship and they had any kind of substantial evidence, I might agree that this question can be open to different opinions, but there is no such debate. this question has a widely accepted correct answer. I don't see how anyone can interpret the question to conclude that there was a close working relationship unless they are simply misinformed. these questions ARE fundamentally different. the email author made a logically flawed assumption and now you are doing the same.

For convenience, I will combine the above two comments and address them together below --

Sigh. You still don't get it. I am not commenting on the bias of the media here. I am commenting on the inappropriate conclusions drawn by Myerson. I don't need to know anything at all about FOX News or PBS in order to point out the flaws in the poll.....


you completely missed my point. my point wasn't that you can't try to point our flaws or anything like that. my point was that if you didn't have a TV in the last 16 years, how could you possibly know the answers to questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat". of course, you could have your opinions on these things but they would be based on incomplete information. I could understand why you would believe that Bush never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. it's because you weren't exposed to the primary tool that the goverment would use to make such a claim. and reading "endless critiques" about the statue scene on the internet wouldn't exactly give you a good grasp of what was shown on TV either, so you wouldn't really be able to speak with any authority on whether it was "staged" or not. all you could say is "it happened, so it's not staged" because THAT much you know.

Clearly the PIPA folks themselves are operating under a misconception, and it has colored their interpretation of the data

actually the question was "was there a close working relationship?" not some relationship, or any relationship. and people still got this one wrong. I don't see how the fact that PIPA had the misconception that there was no connection invalidates those findings. those people who had the impression that there was a close working relationship are wrong regardless of what PIPA believes.

does that invalidate the findings for you?

Even more so. I take it you haven't bothered to read the full report yet. If you had, you would be understanding this a whole lot better.


I obviously did read the report and yes there are other questions that aren't used. so what? that's how polls work dude, they ask many questions. this doesn't invalidate the findings.

I normally don't ask for links but maybe first you should provide me with links proving that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed".

Until PIPA or some other group does a followup poll which consists of more than 40 PBS/NPR respondents, obviously I cannot.


so you have no evidence of this, obviously. and you are not familiar with FOX news or it's viewers but you still contend that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed"? why do you believe this? do you have any logical basis for this belief?

Incorrect. The actual findings of the poll show the reverse -- the more likely you are to hold a mistaken impression, the higher the chances are that you will watch FOX News.

huh? then how do you explain the fact that those who paid closer attention to FOX news were the ones who were most misinformed? are you going to reverse causality on this one too and say that those who are most misinformed are the ones who are more likely to pay more attention to FOX news or some BS like that? care to actually provide any proof or reasoning behind your assertions?

the original poll proves that FOX news viewers are misinformed, at least on those questions.

Which means exactly doodly squat. I could put together a set of three questions where FOX viewers would do far better. As a matter of fact, the PIPA researchers already did, they just chose not to emphasize the fact.


can you please provide some proof of this. what are the three questions in the PIPA poll where FOX news viewers did far better than NPR/PBS viewers. I'll be waiting.

You are missing the key point here -- the folks that answered those questions "wrongly" aren't even "misinformed"

umm.. yes they are. if they answered wrongly and said that it is their "impression" that we had found WMD in Iraq, they are misinformed.

Even the PIPA guys admit this. From their report -- "However, it should be noted that when respondents say that something is likely -- especially those who just say that it is somewhat likely -- it does not mean they have come to the conclusion that it is the case." How much plainer can you state it than that?

you took this line compeletely out of context. the questions under discussion don't ask if it is "likely" or "somewhat likely" that WMD have been found in Iraq. it simply asks for peoples impressions, and those impressions either fit the facts or don't fit the facts. I don't recall seeing any of those three questions asking for peoples impressions on what is the probability that WMD have been found or the probability that there was a close working relationship.

I think everyone should read the PIPA report for themselves. there is some great info in there and the results speak for themselves. I looked at it critically and I have yet to see any specific flaws in the polling methodology. if you don't agree with the results of the poll, I imagine you would be looking hard for it though, maybe a little too hard.

nor do I see any distortions in the way Myerson reported it. he does not say that watching FOX news causes people to be misinformed, he just says that FOX news viewers are more misinformed. this particular finding is not debatable. you didn't even dispute this part. in fact, your "answer" to this poll was an email which attempts to ask an "opposite kind of poll" to the PBS/NPR audience and assumes that they would answer the questions "wrong", thereby proving that they are "misinformed" as FOX news viewers. can you provide us with your reasoning for believing that the PBS/NPR audience would indeed do worse on such a poll? or is it just more speculation based on your preconceptions? need I remind you again that the burden of proof is on you for this assertion?

and of course you try to ignore this gross logical error in the email (hey as long as it proves your point right?), while trying to pick apart the PIPA poll and it's methodology with your incomplete understanding of margin of error and your contention that since the poll asks for impressions, these people are not really misinformed (yeah they just have the wrong impressions! duh), while simultaneously arguing that there are hard, factual answers to subjective questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged?" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat?". absolutely ridiculous man. once again, another one of your brilliantly written posts but once again, showing a distinct lack of logic.



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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2041625 - 10/25/03 03:23 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Now you are trying to switch it over to which political candidate the news watcher is more likely to vote for. Earlier you were insisting this has to do purely with errors in factual knowledge -- that it didn't matter which facts were involved. Which is it?

Of course I'm talking about facts and not about things like the heights of the candidates. If you want to keep playing these semantic games go ahead, but the only one you're amusing is yourself. What we're talking about here is wrong impressions about factual matters. The degree of certainty about those wrong impressions doesn't change the fact that they're a) wrong, and b) pertaining to matters of fact.

Yes, there is a reason. Those who felt more certain of their opinions would have chosen the "don't know" option less frequently. There are significant differences in the demographic makeup of the network news viewers vs print readers -- political affiliation, level of education, importance of religious beliefs -- and even among the various network news viewers. For example, CBS viewers had some odd anomalies compared to the rest. Do Republicans have more confidence in their opinions than Democrats do, or is the reverse the case? Do less-educated people have more confidence in their opinions than better-educated ones or is it the other way around? I'll admit that I don't know which is the case, since I have seen no relevant studies on the issue. So can we confidently claim that a more Republican, more religiously dogmatic, less-educated group (FOX viewers) will say "I don't know" in exactly the same ratio as a more Democrat, more secular, better-educated group (PBS/NPR)? No, we cannot. We can guess, but we have already agreed that speculation won't cut the mustard in this thread.

The only way that having a "don't know" option would work in favor of the FOX viewers would be if they were more scrupulous and better trained in matters like standards of evidence. Given the demographic profile of the FOX viewership, the exact opposite is more likely to be true, in which case, having a "don't know" option would make the FOX viewers wrong by an even greater margin. I didn't have proof handy to show that this is the case, so I just settled upon a baseline assumption that gives equal credit to all groups involved--in which case, the ratio stays roughly the same. In any case, either of these propositions is far more tenable than one that would claim that FOX viewers would be more likely than others to say "don't know" when they're not sure.

The instruction has the same import that the question does. For whatever reason, you are convinced that the percentages would have been identical whether the instructions read as they did or if they had cautioned the respondents to answer only the ones they were 100% sure of. I dispute that contention. I cannot see why you are being so stubborn on this point. Surely you don't believe you will get the same answer to the following two questions :
"Is it your impression -- whether you are confident of your answer or not, whether you have any knowledge of his actual statement or not -- that Bush, in his State of the Union address, claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to the US?"
and
"Are you 100% certain that Bush, in his State of the Union address, claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to the US?


I'm not saying the percentages would have been identical--I'm sure more people in all groups would have answered "don't know." What I'm saying is that the ratios among the groups would remain roughly the same. You understand the difference between an absolute percentage and a ratio, don't you?

Secondly, any poll that's worded "Are you 100% certain that . . ." would be absolutely worthless. Most people would have to answer "don't know" for every single question, thereby yielding no information whatsoever. Very few people are absolutely, 100% certain about anything. Can you say that you are 100% certain about what day your birthday is? No, you can't, because you weren't conscious about things like calendars at the time and weren't for quite a long time thereafter. Your "certain" knowledge about your birthday is based on hearsay--well documented hearsay, to be sure, but since not directly verified by you, not something that you can be 100% certain of.

And yet in PIPA's detailed analysis, that range of questions was ignored, with the authors instead deliberately choosing to focus on a single option: and not on the option which had the highest percentage response, but on the one they judged most egregiously wrong.

The one that was most egregiously wrong according to the best knowledge we have available. So what? It's a legitimate cause for concern if large segments of the populous get such important questions egregiously wrong.

And I still say the percentage would have been different given different instructions and the standard "I don't know" option. You choose to believe otherwise. There is no point in discussing this further, since there is no way of verifying whose position is correct. We can spin our wheels for months on this one.

I repeat: I didn't say the percentages wouldn't change, I said the ratios wouldn't. I came to that conclusion by making the most generous assumption possible on behalf of the FOX audience, which is that they would choose "don't know" by roughly the same percentage as other groups, when it is actually far more likely that they would choose "don't know" less often and be wrong by an even greater margin than they are now.

People with preconceptions tend to look for support for these preconceptions and ignore the rest. In the case of FOX, this may be a rabid O'Reilly or Hannity or Limbaugh fan who never misses one of their shows, and uses their opinions and commentary as factual support for his point of view. These guys reinforce what he is already predisposed to believe

Okay, so FOX News per se doesn't broadcast false information, their commentators do? And their commentators spread false information more often than commentators at other networks. Or maybe FOX blurs the distinction between news and commentary more often than other networks. The poll does not elucidate the exact mechanism by which FOX viewers get so in the dark about the facts, nor can it, but the general conclusion is still that watching FOX, taken as a whole, is bad for your understanding of objective fact.

The point is that this kind of enthusiast (or political junkie or however you want to describe them) naturally tends to pay closer attention to thing political than the guy who has the tv on as background noise while he eats his dinner, yet just because he pays more attention does not guarantee that his preconceptions will be altered. Let's be realistic: he doesn't pay attention in order to have his beliefs proven wrong, but to have them vindicated.

So is it your contention that everybody pays attention to news, all the time, simply in order to have their beliefs vindicated? Kind of a sweeping generalization, wouldn't you say? I understand the psychological predisposition you're referring to: I am guilty of it from time to time, as is probably everybody. But human beings also have the capacity for moments of lucidity, moments when they recognize the weight of fact and realize that their long-term happiness, nay, survival even, depends on adjusting their beliefs to fit the facts, and not vice versa. My argument is that FOX, more often than even other networks (none of whose track record is that great to begin with), denies its viewers opportunities for those moments of lucidity by hewing closely to a specific ideological agenda and misrepresenting the facts whenever necessary in order to ensure that said agenda never undergoes serious challenge.

And that, in a word, is propaganda, not news.

I repeat my premise that given a different set of questions -- a set of questions which fall on both sides of a given political issue rather than the three lopsided questions cherry-picked by PIPA -- the FOX group would do better; not necessarily because they know more about it, but because the correct answer fits with their preconceived worldview. I realize you will not accept my premise lacking another poll, so there is really no point dwelling further on it.

I will continue dwelling on it as long as you insist on reiterating it without even a shred of proof.

There are plenty of right-wing think tanks with deep pockets who would be willing to fund such a new study in order to set the record straight (if it needs straightening, that is). Maybe you should write to one of them and tell them that libbies on the internet are using the PIPA study to beat FOX watchers over the head. Tell them there has to be a new study to show that FOX viewers are better informed on many questions than PBS viewers, questions like "Have Bush's tax cuts helped the economy?" (snicker). My guess is that the folks at the American Enterprise Institute et al know enough about FOX that they wouldn't be willing to waste their money funding a study that would cause even further embarassment.


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: EchoVortex]
    #2045653 - 10/26/03 08:25 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

EchoVortex writes:

What we're talking about here is wrong impressions about factual matters. The degree of certainty about those wrong impressions doesn't change the fact that they're a) wrong, and b) pertaining to matters of fact.

No, what we are talking about here is three specific questions, all of which try to show the invasion of Iraq was a mistake; one of which -- the degree of Al Qaeda linkage -- is open to interpretation, and another of which -- the number of people in the world opposed to the invasion -- is as yet factually undetermined.

But let's for a moment assume that the factual answers to all three questions are known to a certainty -- that there is a known, objectively correct response to each. The poll is still meaningless when it comes to determining how "mistaken" a given group of respondents are for the following reasons:

a) it invites people to give answers in which they may have no confidence, on things of which they may have no knowledge
b) it covers a single topic
c) all the questions singled out about the single topic fall on the same side of a controversial issue.
d) the questions where the FOX group did better than the CBS group were excluded
e) one of the subgroups is too small to yield statistically significant results

The poll was never designed to show why one group has more misimpressions than the other, according to the author's own words. He claims that partway through the process he noticed an apparent correlation, and then made an attempt (and a half-assed attempt at that) to investigate this correlation further.

I didn't have proof handy to show that this is the case, so I just settled upon a baseline assumption that gives equal credit to all groups involved--in which case, the ratio stays roughly the same.

And I say that assumption is wrong. It is unproven (and illogical to assume) that every demographic has the same degree of certainty about their impressions. Without proof, your opinion on the matter has no more (or less) relevance than mine.

I'm not saying the percentages would have been identical--I'm sure more people in all groups would have answered "don't know." What I'm saying is that the ratios among the groups would remain roughly the same.

Why do you believe that every group, regardless of political affiliation, religious affiliation, and educational level, has the same degree of certainty about the correctness of impressions on things they have no confidence in and may have no knowledge about? To which study can you refer us which demonstrates this?

Secondly, any poll that's worded "Are you 100% certain that . . ." would be absolutely worthless. Most people would have to answer "don't know" for every single question, thereby yielding no information whatsoever.

You're dodging the issue. Do you or do you not agree that the sentence "I get the impression that guy is gay," has a different meaning from the sentence "I know that guy is gay" ?

You berate me for my "semantic gymnastics" when all I am doing is pointing out that words have meaning. The links you yourself referred us to (the ABC polls methodology link and the Gallup link) emphasize in no uncertain terms the critical importance of question design, yet you seem to be arguing they can be asked any old way at all and produce identical results.

Okay, so FOX News per se doesn't broadcast false information, their commentators do? And their commentators spread false information more often than commentators at other networks. Or maybe FOX blurs the distinction between news and commentary more often than other networks. The poll does not elucidate the exact mechanism by which FOX viewers get so in the dark about the facts, nor can it, but the general conclusion is still that watching FOX, taken as a whole, is bad for your understanding of objective fact.

Again, you miss the point. Certain enthusiasts watch not just the news, but also commentary. When asked how much attention they pay to news, does it not stand to reason that at least some of those who faithfully watch their favorite op-ed shows, O'Reilly or Hannity or whatever, (as opposed to those who just watch a half hour at six o'clock) might fail to differentiate between "news" and "discussion about news"? In other words, in their minds, by pursuing what they perceive to more detail about current events, they are "paying more attention". I say it does stand to reason some would answer that way. Of course, this holds true of those who watch any political discussion shows, but the second part of my point is that (from what I have read here and elsewhere), FOX has a higher percentage of these "enthusiasts" (some call them right-wing nutjobs) than does ABC or NBC, for example.

So is it your contention that everybody pays attention to news, all the time, simply in order to have their beliefs vindicated?

Re-read what I wrote. I was careful to differentiate between "everybody" and enthusiasts.

But human beings also have the capacity for moments of lucidity, moments when they recognize the weight of fact and realize that their long-term happiness, nay, survival even, depends on adjusting their beliefs to fit the facts, and not vice versa.

Agreed. Human beings do have that capacity. My argument is that by its nature, FOX appears more popular with those who choose to exercise that capacity less frequently. The enthusiasts I describe existed before there was a FOX News for them to watch. This is shown by the astonishingly rapid rise in popularity in such a short period of time -- these people were always out there, it's just that they had no "home" before the advent of FOX News. Or do you believe that FOX created these folks out of nowhere; that FOX managed to convert people from average half-awake news watchers into political junkies ?

My argument is that FOX, more often than even other networks (none of whose track record is that great to begin with), denies its viewers opportunities for those moments of lucidity by hewing closely to a specific ideological agenda and misrepresenting the facts whenever necessary in order to ensure that said agenda never undergoes serious challenge.

FOX misrepresents facts in their news programs to a greater extent than other networks?

I will continue dwelling on it as long as you insist on reiterating it without even a shred of proof.

Yet again we run into your double standard for debate. In one post, you insist that speculation is verboten -- nothing counts but empirical fact. Yet in the next, you speculate -- without even a shred of proof -- that FOX viewers are more likely to be sure of their opinions than non-FOX viewers. Either we may both propose stuff with no proof or neither of us may. Up to you.
.
pinky


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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2045754 - 10/26/03 08:57 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

infidelGOD writes:

it specifically asks for peoples impressions so they can compare them to reality and determine how misinformed they are.

You still don't get it. Having an impression is not even close to the same thing as being either informed or misinformed. Words have meaning. "Impression" doesn't mean "belief". If you are going to redefine words according to your own personal whims, there is no point continuing this discussion.

As for the design of that questionnaire, nobody just pulls instructions like those out of thin air, they deliberately design them that way.

the phrasing of the question and the instructions don't really change anything.

Incorrect. Both Gallup and the ABC polls methodology polls say the phrasing is all-important.

this is normally how polls are done.

Incorrect. I don't know about you, but I have never seen another poll on any topic with instructions worded like that.

no it was clearly designed to find out peoples impressions, perceptions and misperceptions. I thought this was obvious.

And I thought it obvious that an impression is not equivalent to a perception.

a sample size of 40 people is just as accurate as a sample size of 800 if both represent the same precentages of the whole, for example, if the 40 represented a group of 4000 and the 800 represented a group of 80000.

The key phrase here is "just as correct". The thing is, that group of 40 people is not representing a group of 4000, but a group of over 8 million. No pollster in the world will claim that a survey of 40 people out of several million is accurate to the same degree as a survey of several hundred. The smaller the group, the larger the percentage of error. It is not a straight line all the way down from 160, to 80, then 40, then 20, then 10, then 5. Below a certain threshold number the statistical "noise" is greater than the evidentiary value. Once you get below a certain size, saying "just as correct" is the same as saying "just as random". Read the Gallup link.

I know you're going to keep trying to rip apart this poll, but this is pretty much how polls are done. there's nothing logically wrong with the methodology...

Sorry, but ABC and Gallup both disagree with you.

... and the phrasing of the questions tells you exactly what kind of perceptions or "impressions" people have, which is exactly what the poll is trying to find out.

Assuming that this is in fact what the poll was designed to find, my point has been made. The statements made in Myerson's article don't deal with impressions -- Myerson says, "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong."

I'm sure logic told you that Iraqis wanted freedom, but I thought we were talking about Iraqis wanting an American invasion? you seemed to have confused the two.

Take the time to search the forum and find the links to the polls. That is in fact what they were asked.

there are more poll results in page 8 of the PIPA report...

They refer to the same polls EchoVortex provided. Grand total of 62 different countries.

even you agree that the world was opposed.

Nope. I said in my opinion, it is likely more people were opposed than in favor. I also said my opinion is meaningless when held to the standard of verifiable fact. What we are fighting about here are facts. Why must I keep repeating myself? Do you not bother to read what I write?

can we at least say that there is a consensus here that the world was opposed to the war? this is a question that has an answer whether or not you want to accept it as fact.

And at one point there was a consensus that the earth was flat. The respondents were not asked "Do you believe the general consensus is that most people in the world opposed the war?"

yes these polls do exist and they do suggest strongly that the world was opposed to the war, but I already told you that I don't rely on polls to know this so how am I having things both ways?

If you didn't rely on polls, how did you acquire this knowledge?

IF I had said that polls prove that the world was opposed, and that was my only piece of evidence, THEN I would be required to provide proof. but I gave other reasons besides polls.

The only reasons you gave were "common sense" and "common knowledge" and "logic".

I have yet to see a single poll from you proving that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion.

Don't be lazy. Search the forum. There are links in recent (last month or so) threads to articles covering the surveys of the Basra region, Mosul region and I-forget-the-other-region; as well as the Baghdad poll. Those four areas comprise the majority of the populace of Iraq, which is why the pollsters chose them.

you seem to be confused here. 40 people is not total the sample size.

3% of 1362 people is 41. That is the number of PBS viewers combined with the number of NPR listeners. All the conclusions PIPA reached about PBS/NPR impressions came from a pool of 41 people. That was the sample size they were working with.

you sure are going out of your way to discredit the findings of this poll.

Not all the findings, no. There is nothing I can find wrong with the methodology linking the percentage of those saying they would vote for Bush next election and those who say they supported the invasion, for example.

it's good that you're informed, but we're not talking about your misperceptions here (if you have any), we're talking about the misperceptions of FOX news viewers.

No, we are not. We are talking about impressions lacking confidence about matters of which the respondent may have no knowledge.

I don't take that as fact either.

Then why have you spent hours defending it?

it just shows a strong correlation between watching FOX news and holding certain incorrect impressions. that's all.

Which is what I have said all along -- those whose impressions in which they may have no confidence, regarding issues of which they may have no knowledge, are out of line with the "collective consensus" tend to be more likely to prefer FOX News over other network news. We agree. Let's both quit and go home.

ah more word games from you...

I find it amusing you call accepting the fact that words have meaning "word games".

the word "perception" can be subtituted for "impression" here...

No, it cannot. Even pretending for the next few minutes that it can, we are far beyond even "impressions" when it comes to the wording of this poll. It is impressions in which we have no confidence, about things of which we have no knowledge. That definition is so much vaguer than "impressions" that we'll have to invent a whole new word for it.

... so that answering these questions wrong would mean you have a "misperception". simple isn't it? if it is your impression or preception or opinion or whatever that WMD have been found in Iraq, guess what? you're WRONG!

Okay, now you have moved from impression on to perception, then on to opinion. Sorry, but an impression is not the same as an opinion.

there is nothing wrong with the way those questions are phrased. that is generally how it is done in polls. it asks for peoples impressions to see how closely they match reality - to see how misinformed they are.

You are repeating yourself. Answered above.

this is an entirely subjective question. it is fact that Bush never specifically called Iraq an imminent threat.

Good, then we agree the question can be answered correctly. As a matter of fact, we even agree what the correct answer is -- Bush made no such claim.

but it is your opinion that such a claim was never made to the American people - an opinion based on one line in the State of the Union address, which I presume, you read on the internet, while ignoring others things that were said that suggested Iraq was an imminent threat.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Said by whom? By Bush? Not so. And I must point out that "suggested" is not the same as "claimed".

you have to look beyond your over-reliance on the print media here because when such claims are made, the preferred method of the US goverment is TV.

We are not talking about the preferred method of US government. We are talking about issues of fact. Every single word of Bush's press conferences is available on the net as transcripts. We don't have to guess what he said, or try to remember what he said, we can verify what he said.

I bet you didn't see the numerous press conferences where president Bush raised the spectre of a mushroom cloud over an American city and said that Iraq was six months away from getting a nuke, or warned us about hundreds of tons of biological and chemical weapons.

I read the transcripts. I bet I got more out of reading the transcripts than someone watching it live on TV with the telephone ringing and his kids fighting on the rug in front of the Sony.

people could decide for themselves if president Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat.

Of course they could. That doesn't mean they decided correctly.

one line in the State of the Union adress certainly does not settle it, there is a lot more to it which you are not aware of.

I doubt it. In this forum alone, links were provided to every quote the Bush-bashers could dredge up attempting to show he had claimed such a thing. He didn't.

people will have different opinions on this as they should.

That doesn't make their opinions correct. And that is the whole point of the add-on to the PIPA poll -- incorrect impressions.

and btw, you claimed that the PBS/NPR audience would do worse (or to put it more accurately, they would hold the "wrong opinion") on this question than FOX news viewers. how did you come to this conclusion?

Actually, I didn't. It was Sullivan's e-mail writer who did, but it doesn't matter, since the number of PBSers questioned is too small to say with any degree of certainty what impressions they really hold.

do you have any evidence to back it up? let's not forget that these four questions are hypothetical. we only have the emailer's assumption that the PBS viewer would do worse than the FOX news viewer.

You yourself say that liberals hold misperceptions. The majority of people who get most of their news from PBS/NPR are liberals. Therefore, if I had the freedom to cherrypick just three questions, I could tailor them to liberal misperceptions, and end up with PBS/NPR folks getting things wrong more than the predominantly conservative FOX News crew, who hold a different set of preconceptions.

please show me a poll that proves that a majority of Iraqis supported the US invasion. so far all you have are polls from urban Baghdad (which I have yet to see). I imagine you have polls from all of Iraq?

They have been linked in this forum recently. Look them up. Each one has been linked at least twice (not by me or I could provide them for you without having to search).

we certainly don't have any polls actually proving this so I don't see how there can be a factual answer to this question.

Yeah we do. You just haven't read them yet. They were reported in the mainstream news when they were published, then they sank without a trace. Polls with results like this aren't pushed by editors in the press to the same extent that stories about Kobe Bryant and Jessica Lynch are. Blink and you miss them. But that's not due to liberal bias in the press, oh no not at all. It's just a coincidence.

and I think you're being rather hypocritical here. a while ago in another thread you were arguing that anthrax cultures = WMD.

You have mistaken me for someone else.

the difference is that the emailer's questions are subjective. questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged?" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat?" have people on BOTH sides of the debate with different opinions, different interpretations.

Your double standard is that you claim these questions are open to interpretation, yet the degree of linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda is not.

when he says "imagine an opposite kind of poll" and asks those questions, he assumes that his questions have the same kind of objective answers as in the original poll...

His assumption is correct. Bush didn't make the claim. The toppling of the statue was not staged. The US did not sell significant amounts of arms to Iraq. The majority of Iraqis favor the invasion.

there are people who believe that this is precisely what Bush did. don't you get it?

And the people who believe that are wrong, just as the people in the poll who have the impression with no confidence about something they may have no knowledge of that WMD were found hold inaccurate impressions. Don't you get it?

my point was that if you didn't have a TV in the last 16 years, how could you possibly know the answers to questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat".

Through print reports, mpg files, still photos, transcripts, information published in this forum, etc.

I obviously did read the report and yes there are other questions that aren't used. so what?

So for you it is mere coincidence that the questions showing CBS viewers held inaccurate impressions in a higher percentage than FOX viewers were discarded, even though they were part of the same poll asked to the same group? Okay then.

so you have no evidence of this, obviously. and you are not familiar with FOX news or it's viewers but you still contend that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed"? why do you believe this? do you have any logical basis for this belief?

Statistically speaking, lefties tend to hold a certain set of preconceptions, often in the face of evidence to the contrary. The same can be said of righties, except they have a different set of pet preconceptions. Both groups tend to let their preconceptions color their impressions, since both groups are human. Therefore, depending on which preconceptions are targeted (through the selection of different questions on one side or the other of a controversial issue), different impressions will result.

then how do you explain the fact that those who paid closer attention to FOX news were the ones who were most misinformed?

See my post to EchoVortex re "enthusiasts".

are you going to reverse causality on this one too and say that those who are most misinformed are the ones who are more likely to pay more attention to FOX news or some BS like that?

It is not reversing causality, but otherwise, you have it essentially right. To distance ourselves a bit from this specific poll, imagine instead the UFO crowd. UFO buffs pay more attention to websites such as rense.com purporting to prove crop circles are the work of aliens than the average person off the street does. They hold a certain preconception, and spend a lot of time feeding it -- they pay more attention to those articles than you or I. The more fanatical the UFO buff, the more attention he pays.

you took this line compeletely out of context. the questions under discussion don't ask if it is "likely" or "somewhat likely" that WMD have been found in Iraq. it simply asks for peoples impressions...

You are making my point for me. Thank you.

I think everyone should read the PIPA report for themselves. there is some great info in there and the results speak for themselves.

On this we both agree.

I looked at it critically and I have yet to see any specific flaws in the polling methodology.

Look harder.

if you don't agree with the results of the poll, I imagine you would be looking hard for it though, maybe a little too hard.

As I said, I have no objections to many of the conclusions they reach.

he does not say that watching FOX news causes people to be misinformed, he just says that FOX news viewers are more misinformed.

Yeah he does. He says, "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong."

and of course you try to ignore this gross logical error in the email (hey as long as it proves your point right?), while trying to pick apart the PIPA poll and it's methodology with your incomplete understanding of margin of error and your contention that since the poll asks for impressions, these people are not really misinformed (yeah they just have the wrong impressions! duh), while simultaneously arguing that there are hard, factual answers to subjective questions like "was the toppling of the statue staged?" or "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat?". absolutely ridiculous man. once again, another one of your brilliantly written posts but once again, showing a distinct lack of logic.

Well, let's sum up some of your ridiculousness and lack of logic then:

1) you don't trust polls, but you trust the results of the PIPA poll
2) an impression (even one in which you have no confidence, about something of which you have no knowledge) is identical to a belief
3) you admit there is no proof that the majority of the world opposed the invasion, yet we are to accept it as a fact
4) the definition of "stage" is to cause to happen, but you provide no evidence that the media (or the pentagon) caused it to happen
5) no matter how a question is worded, the results of a poll will be the same
6) no matter how few people are polled, the results have validity
7) even though you acknowledge Bush made no such claim, you say people who believe he made it are not factually wrong

There's probably more, but frankly I'm too tired to go back and find them now. It doesn't matter anyway. There's probably only three of us even reading this thread anymore, none of us is coming up with anything new, none of us will change the opinion of the others. If you choose to believe a biased and sloppily designed poll proves that the more you watch FOX News the more you'll get things wrong, feel free to continue to believe it. No skin off my nose.

pinky


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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2046379 - 10/27/03 01:13 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

You still don't get it. Having an impression is not even close to the same thing as being either informed or misinformed.

so you're going to reject the findings of this poll because it asks for impressions...

let's see... if you're going to conduct a poll trying to see what kind of impressions people are getting from the media, doesn't it make sense to ask for people's impressions? this seems perfectly normal and obvious to me.

those questions do tell you how misinformed people are. and remember that everyone in the poll was asked for their impressions, not just the FOX news viewers. everyone had to answer the same questions, whether they were certain of the answers or not. so the comparative results (which is really what this poll is about) are still valid.

nobody just pulls instructions like those out of thin air, they deliberately design them that way.

you know, they give the same kind of instructions in the SAT. they tell you to go ahead and guess your best answer based on what you know. to make an educated guess. this isn't so unusual, and I don't see why you would reject the poll based on this. and again, everyone was given the same instructions. if only the poor FOX news viewers were forced to answer questions they didn't have the answers to, you might have a point.

The thing is, that group of 40 people is not representing a group of 4000, but a group of over 8 million

right, but you're missing the key point. if 40 people represents 1.672% of the PBS/NPR audience and 240 people also represents 1.672% of FOX news viewers, statistically speaking, they are equally represenstitve of their respective groups. this is just simple logic which I have already explained.

The statements made in Myerson's article don't deal with impressions -- Myerson says, "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong."

ok. whatever. maybe he should have said "The more you watch, the more likely you'll have the wrong impressions". still doesn't change the fact that FOX news viewers have things wrong.

yes these polls do exist and they do suggest strongly that the world was opposed to the war, but I already told you that I don't rely on polls to know this so how am I having things both ways?

If you didn't rely on polls, how did you acquire this knowledge?


there are many ways to "know" things without rigorous polls. I know that the world was opposed to the US invasion. there was the UN non-vote, statements made from the coutries themselves, massive demonstrations all over the world, including in countries that supported the war, and of course a little bit of common sense and logic. I certainly don't rely solely on polls to know things.

you seem to be confused here. 40 people is not total the sample size.

3% of 1362 people is 41. That is the number of PBS viewers combined with the number of NPR listeners. All the conclusions PIPA reached about PBS/NPR impressions came from a pool of 41 people. That was the sample size they were working with.


ummm. I said that it wasn't the total sample size. the small number is a function of the actual number of people who get their news from PBS or NPR. if there were more of them, this sample size would be larger but it wouldn't be a more accurate representation because it would still be the same percentage of the total. I don't think you're getting this whole statistics thing. if I did a poll and sampled a group of 40 and another group of 500, you would think that the 500 is more representative wouldn't you? well, what if I said that the 40 represented 4000 people and the 500 represented a million people? would you still say that the group of 500 is more representative because it's a larger sample??? think about it. everything is relative.

In this forum alone, links were provided to every quote the Bush-bashers could dredge up attempting to show he had claimed such a thing. He didn't.

alright here's the thing. you can make a claim for something without actually saying the exact words. so I'm not surprised that you don't think Bush made such a claim, because you never read it. and since you never read it, you think that settles it, and you take it as fact. but there are people, even many senators and congressman, who have read everything Bush has said, and they still believe that he claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. I would guess that most Americans would think that Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat. yes we all know that Bush never actually called Iraq an imminent threat in those exact words but that doesn't really mean anything. I mean, can you find where Bush said Osama bin Laden was an imminent threat? in those exact words? if he never said it, does it mean he never made that claim? think about it, there's more to it than just searching the internet to see the exact words that were said.

You yourself say that liberals hold misperceptions. The majority of people who get most of their news from PBS/NPR are liberals. Therefore, if I had the freedom to cherrypick just three questions, I could tailor them to liberal misperceptions, and end up with PBS/NPR folks getting things wrong more than the predominantly conservative FOX News crew, who hold a different set of preconceptions.

well can you pick those three questions? go ahead, I know that there won't be any polls, and you couldn't prove anything but I want to see what you could come up with. just three fact based questions for the PBS/NPR crowd. and don't assume that PBS or NPR is the liberal equivalent of FOX news. they are on average much better informed and better educated than the average FOX news viewer. you probably already guessed that.

Your double standard is that you claim these questions are open to interpretation, yet the degree of linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda is not.

yeah sure the degree of linkage is open to interpretation and there was a question that addressed just that in the poll. but don't change the terms of the debate. the actual question was "Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization?" and if you had the "impression" that such clear evidence has been found, I'm afraid you are misinformed, or you have the "wrong impression" or whatever you want to call being WRONG. I'm sorry but this particular question is not open to interpretation.

His assumption is correct. Bush didn't make the claim. The toppling of the statue was not staged. The US did not sell significant amounts of arms to Iraq. The majority of Iraqis favor the invasion.

incorrect. his questions clearly are open to interpretation to a much greater degree than the questions asked in the PIPA poll. some of his questions would be answered "wrong" by many well informed people who simply see things differently. can you say the same about the questions in the PIPA poll?

So for you it is mere coincidence that the questions showing CBS viewers held inaccurate impressions in a higher percentage than FOX viewers were discarded, even though they were part of the same poll asked to the same group? Okay then.

I think that the article is about the misperceptions of FOX news viewers, not CBS viewers. but how does the exclusion of questions showing FOX news viewers doing better than CBS viewers invalidate the finding that FOX news viewers were more misinformed than NPR/PBS viewers?

so you have no evidence of this, obviously. and you are not familiar with FOX news or it's viewers but you still contend that "the PBS/NPR crowd is as misinformed"? why do you believe this? do you have any logical basis for this belief?

Statistically speaking, lefties tend to hold a certain set of preconceptions, often in the face of evidence to the contrary. The same can be said of righties, except they have a different set of pet preconceptions. Both groups tend to let their preconceptions color their impressions, since both groups are human


sure, I agree with that, I said as much already. but you didn't answer my question: why do you think that the PBS/NPR crowd (not lefties) is as misinformed as FOX news viewers (not righties)? PBS and NPR are not liberal versions of FOX news. there is actual in-depth analysis of the news there and many intelligent conservatives and moderates get their news from public TV and radio. not for idealogical reasons, but it's the only place they could get news free from commercial interests and just because of the quality of the reporting itself. it's pretty clear that people who get their news from PBS or NPR are not seperated from FOX news viewers by ideology alone.

They hold a certain preconception, and spend a lot of time feeding it -- they pay more attention to those articles than you or I. The more fanatical the UFO buff, the more attention he pays.

so you essentially agree that FOX news does give the wrong impressions to their viewers... but of course only to the viewers who are more apt to accept those impressions, those who are more likely to pay more attention to every possible (however thin) lead about WMD being discovered or every unsubstantiated story about connections between Iraq and al qaida being hyped etc that is standard fare on FOX news.

I looked at it critically and I have yet to see any specific flaws in the polling methodology.

Look harder


can you point to any specific flaws in the polling methodology? I'm afraid you'll have to do better than "they ask for impressions".

he does not say that watching FOX news causes people to be misinformed, he just says that FOX news viewers are more misinformed.

Yeah he does. He says, "The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong."


maybe you misundertood him, but that just means that the more closely you pay attention to FOX news, the more likely you are to get things wrong, which is exactly what the poll found. it doesn't say that FOX news actually causes people to have things wrong, which would be pretty much impossible to prove anyway.

Well, let's sum up some of your ridiculousness and lack of logic then:

1) you don't trust polls, but you trust the results of the PIPA poll


I just don't trust incomplete polls coming out of a warzone. I do trust a lot of other polls. however, I never take them as fact.

2) an impression (even one in which you have no confidence, about something of which you have no knowledge) is identical to a belief

an impression that does not match reality is a false impression. and FOX news viewers tend to have impressions that are far from reality. that's all. it doesn't have to be their belief that WMD have been found, if they have the impression that WMD have been found, they're still wrong.

3) you admit there is no proof that the majority of the world opposed the invasion, yet we are to accept it as a fact

there is actually a lot of evidence that the majority of the world was opposed but you don't have to accept it as fact if you don't want to. you can just take it as a standard to judge the accuracy of peoples impressions.

4) the definition of "stage" is to cause to happen, but you provide no evidence that the media (or the pentagon) caused it to happen

I never said that the media or the pentagon caused it (there you go misrepresenting my position again). I only said that the question was open to interpretation. you are the one who said it was a fact that it wasn't staged. and btw, the definition of stage is not "cause to happen", which is apparently the definition you're going by. the complete definition is "to produce or cause to happen for public view or public effect". is it so farfetched to think that this is precisely what happened? do you know the motivations of those who caused the event? you seem to be sure of it. I'm not so sure, that's why I think the question is open to interpretation. I think it's a very likely possibility that it was staged for the cameras.

5) no matter how a question is worded, the results of a poll will be the same

I said no such thing. I said that the way those questions were phrased do not change the results of this particular poll. if the same questions, with the exact same wording is given to everyone, and FOX news viewers still did the worst, the comparative results are still valid.

6) no matter how few people are polled, the results have validity

you don't seem to understand statistics. there are less NPR/PBS viewers out there, so there will be a smaller sample of them in a poll. this is very obvious.

7) even though you acknowledge Bush made no such claim, you say people who believe he made it are not factually wrong

actually what I acknowledged was that Bush never actually said Iraq was an imminent threat. whether or not he made that claim is a different question and one that is open to interpretation.

in fairness let me compile a list of your ridiculousness and lack of logic.

1) you think that there are hard, factual answers to subjective questions like "was the statue scene staged?" and "did Bush claim Iraq was an imminent threat?"
2) FOX news viewers who thought that WMD have been found in Iraq are not really "misinformed" because the poll asked for their "impressions".
3) any poll that instructs you to answer to the best of your knowledge is flawed.
4) a sample group of 40 cannot give any meaningful results in a poll.
5) it is absolute truth that the toppling of the statue wasn't staged because "it happened" and because you've read "endless critiques" of it.
6) Bush never made the claim that Iraq was an imminent threat because he never actually said it.
7) if you hold the "incorrect" opinions on the emailer's questions, you are "misinformed"
8) it is fact that the majority of Iraqis supported the invasion.
9) the NPR/PBS audience is as misinformed as FOX news viewers, but you have absolutely no evidence to support this.
10) causality is the "the entire premise behind Myerson's screed"
11) the only way to know things is through rigorous polls.

you seem unwilling or incapable of making the key distinction between objective and subjective questions. let me sum up some of the questions here (I took out the questions dealing with polls or public opinion):

from the original poll:

Since the war with Iraq ended, is it your impression that the US has or has not found
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?

Is it your impression that the US has or has not found clear evidence in Iraq that
Saddam Hussein was working closely with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization?


these questions seem pretty objective but according to you there are no right answers here because they ask for impressions and because the instructions tell you to answer even if you are not certain. you could think what you want about the phrasing of these questions or the instructions but the key here is that the answers given will depend entirely on peoples knowledge (or ignorance) of facts, or if you like, their "impression" of facts.

but for these questions:

Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq's WMD was imminent?

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?


you say there are factual "correct" answers? even though some are clearly subjective? even though some are entirely dependent on people's opinions and interpretations and not on their knowledge of facts? these questions are not only subjective, they are ambiguous as well. what exactly does he mean by "significant amounts of arms"? should we be guessing the criteria here? the answer depends on what the criteria is. you could certainly call a small amount of anthrax or botulism that we sold to Iraq a "significant amount of arms" if the criteria is kill potential, but not if the criteria is tonnage, or actual use. we are left to guess what he meant by it... you seemed to have already decided that the criteria is tonnage and come up with your own "correct" answer but you don't get to decide what the criteria is for everyone. people who are well-informed of the facts will answer differently depending on their interpretation of the question. that's why these questions would never be used in a poll to determine misperceptions. they are way too subjective. he might as well be asking for your favorite color and saying you're "misinformed" if you answer "incorrectly".


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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2046600 - 10/27/03 03:47 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Look, it's pretty obvious that since you appear to WANT to believe Fox viewers have more incorrect impressions, that nothing could be said that will change your mind.

Pinky destroyed all arguements about this long ago.

Give it a rest while you can still walk away with a shred of dignity left.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers


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OfflineEchoVortex
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: Phred]
    #2046774 - 10/27/03 07:32 AM (20 years, 3 months ago)

No, what we are talking about here is three specific questions, all of which try to show the invasion of Iraq was a mistake; one of which -- the degree of Al Qaeda linkage -- is open to interpretation, and another of which -- the number of people in the world opposed to the invasion -- is as yet factually undetermined.

The three questions are closely tied with the innuendo and half-truths given as justification for the war. If Bush had told the American people "we're doing this simply because the Iraqi people want us to," the question as to the Iraqi people's wishes would be germane.

Do you actually think it is "open to interpretation" whether Iraq had a direct role in the 9/11 attacks? Only if you're interpreting non-existent evidence. Given that results are in from more than a third of the countries of the world representing over two-thirds of the world's population, to say that the world's opposition to the war is not "factually determined" is wishful thinking, pure and simple.

a) it invites people to give answers in which they may have no confidence, on things of which they may have no knowledge

If they have no knowledge, then they are also, by definition, misinformed.

b) it covers a single topic

Only the single most important topic facing the United States at the present time. Going to war is not a trifling matter.

c) all the questions singled out about the single topic fall on the same side of a controversial issue.

It's not the pollster's fault if all of Bush and Blair's fear-mongering was an edifice built on sand. Those two set the terms of the debate, and they may take the responsibility for making claims for which they had no proof.

d) the questions where the FOX group did better than the CBS group were excluded

Exluded from where? From Meyerson's editorial or from the report itself? If it was excluded from the report, how would you know about them?

e) one of the subgroups is too small to yield statistically significant results

Not true, as both infidelGod and I have shown from two separate angles. Even if it were true, the results of NPR/PBS are unrelated to the fact that the FOX crowd was at the bottom of the entire barrel.

And I say that assumption is wrong. It is unproven (and illogical to assume) that every demographic has the same degree of certainty about their impressions. Without proof, your opinion on the matter has no more (or less) relevance than mine.

I called it a baseline assumption. Maybe for clarity's sake I should have called it a "working assumption"--that is to say, an assumption made for the sake of argument. I personally believe it is not a true assumption, but given the fact that neither of us can prove either that FOX viewers are more or less likely than others to have the same degree of certainty about their answers, it is the only possible admissible assumption. Of course you don't want to accept such an assumption, because the only way your objections carry ANY weight at all is if FOX viewers are MORE likely to answer "don't know" than others.

Why do you believe that every group, regardless of political affiliation, religious affiliation, and educational level, has the same degree of certainty about the correctness of impressions on things they have no confidence in and may have no knowledge about? To which study can you refer us which demonstrates this?

I DON'T believe that. I hope my previous comments make that clear. But I also certainly do not believe that FOX viewers are more likely to harbor self-doubt, have higher personal standards of what constitutes acceptable evidence, and be more scrupulous about such matters than a better educated, more politically centrist audience. That assumption flies both in the face of available evidence and simple logic. Unfortunately for you, that assumption would be the only one (if true) that would validate your objections to the wording of the instructions.

You're dodging the issue. Do you or do you not agree that the sentence "I get the impression that guy is gay," has a different meaning from the sentence "I know that guy is gay" ?

Both of those questions would rely upon direct experience of "that guy," either seeing him, talking with him, having sex with him, etc. However, unless they were privy to the inner workings of the Iraqi government, or have travelled the country with the weapons inspectors, or have gone around the world conducting polls in different countries, there is no way that the average Americans being polled in this survey would have any direct experience of the matters discussed in the questions. Both their "knowledge" and their "impressions" on those matters come from the same source: the media, which is the vehicle through which both the pronouncements of their government and the information gleaned by independent sources reaches them. Regardless of whether it is a "knowledge" or an "impression", it can still be traced back to the same source.

You berate me for my "semantic gymnastics" when all I am doing is pointing out that words have meaning. The links you yourself referred us to (the ABC polls methodology link and the Gallup link) emphasize in no uncertain terms the critical importance of question design, yet you seem to be arguing they can be asked any old way at all and produce identical results.


Straw man. I never said they can be "asked any old way": I pointed out, for example, that a poll requiring "100% certainty" would be useless. I also realize the fact that, asked a different way, those questions would have yielded a higher percentage of "don't know" answers. But nothing suggests that the ratios among the different groups, which is really the crux of the matter here, would work more in FOX's favor if the wording had insisted that one answer only when one is absolutely certain of that answer.

Again, you miss the point. Certain enthusiasts watch not just the news, but also commentary. When asked how much attention they pay to news, does it not stand to reason that at least some of those who faithfully watch their favorite op-ed shows, O'Reilly or Hannity or whatever, (as opposed to those who just watch a half hour at six o'clock) might fail to differentiate between "news" and "discussion about news"? In other words, in their minds, by pursuing what they perceive to more detail about current events, they are "paying more attention". I say it does stand to reason some would answer that way. Of course, this holds true of those who watch any political discussion shows, but the second part of my point is that (from what I have read here and elsewhere), FOX has a higher percentage of these

Maybe some of them might fail to make that differentiation, but it's not for you or me to say whether that contingent is large enough to account for the differences. Let me remind you that one commentator, Neil Cavuto, actually called those who opposed the war "sickening" on air. This says a lot about FOX. On none of the other networks considered in the study would a commentator actually hurl epithets of that nature at people who disagreed with his political opinions. I defy anyone on the forum to show me a single instance where they have.

Agreed. Human beings do have that capacity. My argument is that by its nature, FOX appears more popular with those who choose to exercise that capacity less frequently. The enthusiasts I describe existed before there was a FOX News for them to watch. This is shown by the astonishingly rapid rise in popularity in such a short period of time -- these people were always out there, it's just that they had no "home" before the advent of FOX News. Or do you believe that FOX created these folks out of nowhere; that FOX managed to convert people from average half-awake news watchers into political junkies ?


I never said FOX created those people out of nowhere. Some of them were probably that way before, and some of them were probably straddling the fence and had their thinking clouded by FOX's bias and sensationalism, all the while being gullible enough to belive the slogan "fair and balanced." But certainly FOX for it's part must be doing something not to offend those people and drive them away: and since broadcasting unvarnished truth, much of which will be offensive to blinkered minds, is one way of offending them, that's clearly not what they're doing. By the way, anybody who thinks that WMD were found in Iraq does not qualify as a "political junkie" in my book. The people on the forum ARE political junkies and I don't think there's a single person here, left or right, who would have gotten that question wrong.

FOX misrepresents facts in their news programs to a greater extent than other networks?

Misrepresentation by omission, just like the video of the Saddam statue. I know it would be convenient to dismiss lying by omission as not really being lying, but I'm afraid it IS still lying.

Yet again we run into your double standard for debate. In one post, you insist that speculation is verboten -- nothing counts but empirical fact. Yet in the next, you speculate -- without even a shred of proof -- that FOX viewers are more likely to be sure of their opinions than non-FOX viewers. Either we may both propose stuff with no proof or neither of us may. Up to you.


First you were criticizing me for assuming that all viewers would have the same certainty about their opinions, and now you're criticizing me for assuming that FOX viewers are more likely to be sure of their opinions than non-FOX viewers. So which is it? Which assumption did I make?

I stated my guess that FOX viewers would be less likely to answer "don't know" but I stated clearly at the time that I couldn't prove it and so didn't consider it an admissible assumption for the purposes of this debate. I therefore suggested (for the purposes of this debate) that we give equal credit to all viewers, since you obviously can't prove that FOX viewers would be more likely to answer "don't know", just like you don't have evidence for a single one of the claims you've made on this thread so far. I have provided numerous links, while you have provided nothing. I have made statements on the basis of evidence, however incomplete, while you have pulled pure, unmitigated speculation out of the air time and time again. My evidence may merely be "shreds" but your evidence wouldn't even qualify as vapor. If FOX viewers are as careless and self-indulgent in their relation to evidence as you have been in the course of this particular thread, every assumption I've made about them would be true.



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InvisibleinfidelGOD
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Registered: 04/18/02
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2048351 - 10/27/03 07:20 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Look, it's pretty obvious that since you appear to WANT to believe Fox viewers have more incorrect impressions

this isn't about what I want to believe. it's about basing your beliefs on real evidence, not on baseless speculation.

that nothing could be said that will change your mind.

no, not nothing. if you or anyone else can produce any actual evidence, I would have no trouble changing my mind on this issue.

Pinky destroyed all arguements about this long ago

lol! you haven't been following this too closely have you?



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Invisibleluvdemshrooms
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: infidelGOD]
    #2048356 - 10/27/03 07:22 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Actually, I've read every word.


--------------------
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers


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OfflineThe_Red_Crayon
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Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: luvdemshrooms]
    #2050843 - 10/28/03 02:34 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

Fox,Cnn,MSNBC, all of the news channels are nothing but Entertainment. They are not news. They are driven by what people want to hear. If the people are leaning to a more conservative than they dont want to hear that Iraq is a war we Cant win. They wanna hear news that is good. That Iraq is succesful that everything is gonna be ok.


Of course, Its been that way for years. It will only take a few years for reality to dawn on the general people, And when Americans start to be more Complacent about the war. Than maybe the general populace will find out than.


Just like Vietnam.


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OfflineSquattingMarmot
Inquiring Mind
Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 418
Last seen: 9 years, 7 months
Re: Fox Viewers Most Misinformed [Re: The_Red_Crayon]
    #2050890 - 10/28/03 02:51 PM (20 years, 3 months ago)

This is one beast of a thread.


--------------------
"In the United States anybody can be president. Thats the problem."

"The gray-haired douche bag, Barbara Bush, has a slogan: "Encourage your child to read every day." What she should be is encouraging children to question what they read every day."

- George Carlin


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