Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
For more information on the dustup among Jon Stewart, Fox News, and Politifact, here’s Politifact’s original piece on Stewart’s claim that Fox News viewers are more misinformed than viewers of other networks: PolitiFact | Jon Stewart says those who watch Fox News are the ‘most consistently misinformed media viewers’.
When many Politifact readers challenged their analysis, they responded with another article defending their “False” rating: PolitiFact | Readers say we were uninformed about Jon Stewart’s claim.
But I think the Politifact editors are still missing an important point, by looking at the issue too broadly. The real problem with Fox’s news reporting is that it misinforms their audience specifically, and most insistently, on issues that are hot button right wing talking points — such as Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” or “Obamacare is a government takeover of health care,” or any number of other far right causes of the day.
Indeed, the two absurd lies listed above were Politifact’s Lies of the Year for 2009 and 2010, respectively — and both of these falsehoods are now unchallengeable articles of faith on the right wing, repeated endlessly on blogs, news sites, and in opinion pieces. I’d argue that Fox News is the prime reason for this near-universal acceptance of misinformation.
Chris Mooney has a good post at Desmogblog, linking to five studies that underline this point very effectively: Chris Mooney | Jon Stewart 1, Politifact 0: Fox News Viewers Are The Most Misinformed.
A case in point is Politifact’s recent and deeply misguided attempt to correct Jon Stewart on the topic of…misinformation and Fox News. This is a subject on which we’ve developed some expertise here…my recent post on studies showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed, on an array of issues, is the most comprehensive such collection that I’m aware of, at least when it comes to public opinion surveys detecting statistical correlations between being misinformed about contested facts and Fox News viewership. I’ve repeatedly asked whether anyone knows of additional studies—including contradictory studies—but none have yet been cited.
Stewart, very much in the vein of my prior post, went on the air with Fox’s Chris Wallace and stated,
“Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.”
My research, and my recent post, most emphatically supports this statement. Indeed, I cited five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) separate public opinion studies in support of it—although I carefully noted that these studies do not prove causation (e.g., that watching Fox News causes one to be more misinformed). The causal arrow could very well run the other way—believing wrong things could make one more likely to watch Fox News in the first place.
But the fundamental point is, when it comes to believing political misinformation and watching Fox News, I know of no other studies than these five—though I’d be glad to see additional studies produced. Until then, these five all point in one obvious direction.
“Every poll,” to quote Stewart.
Politifact wasn’t even aware of the studies I’ve cited. Instead, the site’s attempt to debunk Stewart largely relied on misunderstanding what he meant.
