A study has come out by the University of Maryland on how misinformed voters are in the United States. It also recorded which were the primary news sources of each respondent. There were some instances where viewers of more left-wing news channels were misinformed, but many more were found on Fox News. Viewers of this so-called "fair and balanced" channel seem to believe false truths about Democrats. Among others, they were 30 percentage points more likely to believe that "most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring" and 31% more likely to believe that it is not clear whether Obama was born in the United States. And it was not a function of partisanship as Democrats who watched Fox News also were misinformed. True, spinning to the end, the senior vice president for news editorial said,
“The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”
And the Princeton Review then remarked that the University of Maryland was among the "Best Northeastern Colleges" and was actually nineteenth on the list of "Best Party Schools." No wonder Fox News viewers are misinformed. We do not need this in Canada.
News organizations can educate voters about public policy and economic conditions, but they can also misinform voters. As if to prove the point, a study released Friday found that “substantial levels of misinformation” seeped out to the electorate of the United States at the time of the midterm elections this year.
Read more at the New York Times.
