Most MisInformed Voters: Study says Fox News Viewers!

[christiefan915]

I heard a retired CIA agent (Ray McGovern) whose expertise was the old Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries say the propaganda coming out of Fox News is at the same level as Pravda. But I suspect most Russians knew Pravda was propaganda...LOL

Fox News viewers, regardless of political information, were "significantly more likely" to believe that:

--Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

--Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

--The economy is getting worse (26 points)

--Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

--The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

--Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

--The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

--When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

--And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

In addition, the study said, increased viewership of Fox News led to increased belief in these false stories. ref

And don't forget about Saddam being tied to 9/11.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as TARP, is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector which was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008.

United States Secretary of the Treasury

Henry Paulson - July 10, 2006 to January 20, 2009

LINK required for your false accusation.

seriously, do you ever read the news?......do you realize Geithner was the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time?.......the FRBNY issued the checks for the TARP bailout and was reimbursed by the federal government after Congress finally got around to approving it......

http://www.morssglobalfinance.com/paulson-tarp-aig-goldman-and-geithner/

 

[evince]

This is todays right.

There are no verifiable facts to them anymore.

Its all partisan bickering.


The FACTS in this study are verifiable.


They are FACTS not opinions.


The Fox viewers are given false facts.


They then claim reality does not exsist.

 

[apple0154]

I read the actual poll. The same could be said about the viewers of other media depending on the issue and the question asked. In addition to this -the publics understanding of the validity of CBO numbers or the claim of "most economists" is totally subjective. The CBO for instance published different numbers based on variable data.

Anyone who actually believes that this HC monstrosity will reduce the deficit may not be watching Fox...but they ought to be given a bathrobe and slippers after being committed.

The Congressional Budget Office just revised upwards the projected cost (PDF) of the new health care law by $115 billion. The increase is due mainly to the fact that the original CBO score of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act did not factor in the cost of actually having the government implement the reform via discretionary spending, and the law provided for a significant number of grants which did not have a specific dollar value.

I suspect at least some of the decisions about how to structure the new law’s grants and discretionary spending requirements were to help keep the CBO score low. Democrats became bizarrely and dysfunctionally obsessed with the CBO score about which most Americans are completely misinformed if they know anything at all.

The extremely long, completely unnecessary, four-year phased implementation was the most egregious gimmick to keep the CBO score below some arbitrary number. If you believe the new law will actually provide significant help to Americans in need, the multi-year delay by Congressional Democrats, simply to get a prettier CBO score, should cause moral outrage.
In the end, how much the law will actually cost is anyone’s guess. The CBO tries their best, but their projections require some huge assumptions that could easily be wrong, and their previous track record on predicting the costs of health care legislation is poor. What we do know is that the new law lacks true cost control and will not bring our outsized and escalating health care expenditures in line with the rest of the industrialized world. It will not come close to solving that problem, regardless of what this revised analysis by the CBO says.

Read here

(Response to underlined portion.)
That's because a plan similar to the rest of the industrialized world was rejected. A government option would have done much to set things in the right direction.

One has to remember the current plan is a start. As more and more people realize the benefits and come to understand the lies put forward by the opposition (death panels, doctors becoming civil servants, etc) the plan will become similar to the rest of the industrialized world and the savings will follow.

 

[Bfgrn]

seriously, do you ever read the news?......do you realize Geithner was the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time?.......the FRBNY issued the checks for the TARP bailout and was reimbursed by the federal government after Congress finally got around to approving it......

http://www.morssglobalfinance.com/paulson-tarp-aig-goldman-and-geithner/

Seriously, do you pay attention to the QUESTION?

Other key points of misinformation among voters were:

• 40% of voters believed incorrectly that the TARP legislation was initiated under Barack Obama, rather than George Bush

but then, it WAS initiated by Geithner, who was selected by Obama to be his treasury secretary.....which many on the left still refuse to admit.....

It (TARP) was initiated by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson while George W. Bush was president, NOT when Barack Obama was president or Geithner was Treasury Secretary. I am aware Geithner was the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time and Mortimer Snerd was dog catcher in Butt Fuck Montana...

Your word for the day: irrelevant

 

[charver]

You people should leave the Fox viewers alone.

Why can't you comprehend that some people just don't like to be overwhelmed by "facts" with their news.

Personally, i'll take a man on the verge of a mental breakdown weeping hysterically over your so-called "facts" every time.

 

[Liberty]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/12/17/fox_news_viewers_often_misinformed.html

Fox News Viewers Often Misinformed

A new University of Maryland study finds that those "who had greater exposure to news sources were generally better informed... There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue."

Key finding: Fox News viewers were were "significantly" more likely than non-viewers to erroneously believe false information about the economy, taxes, climate change, bailouts and whether President Obama was born in the United States.

"These effects increased incrementally with increasing levels of exposure and all were statistically significant. The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it.

I can't speak for Fox, but the others are nothing more than news for socialists to enjoy. Which probably explains why they have so few viewers.

 

[Socrtease]

I bet more people that watch Fox news also think the earth is only 8,000 to 10,000 years old and that Dinosaur fossils were put on earth to confuse us.

 

[Good Luck]

Though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that the stimulus legislation has saved or created 2.0-5.2 million jobs, only 8% of voters thought most economists who had studied it concluded that the stimulus legislation had created or saved several million jobs. Most (68%) believed that economists estimate that it only created or saved a few jobs and 20% even believed that it resulted in job losses.

Here is how the above CBO figures were arrived at:
A project is created, and funds from the stimulus plan applied for. The project says it will take X number of man hours to complete over Y period of time. CBO uses those numbers to calculate that means Z people will be employed to complete the project, and counts those jobs as "created or saved"

What a crock! There is no way to determine if the people hired to work on the project were new employees, nor is there any way to determine if the people working on the project would have been without work had the project not been created. At the time CBO issued this report the vast majority of projects had not even left the planning stage, they'd just been approved for receiving funds.

In reality, most of the projects are awarded to contractors which have several projects going and the workers would have been employed even without the additional project handed them by the government.

In short, they are using bogus calculations to vastly inflate the effect the stimulus had on employment. Anyone with a real brain in their skull (as opposed to the mule shit used by liberals) can figure this out without watching Fox news.

However, according to liberal liars, if we believe this CBO LIE, we are "informed", but if we choose to believe reality, we are "misinformed". What a fucking piece of typical liberal elitist "We're smarter than you" bullshit.

 

[Liberty]

I bet more people that watch Fox news also think the earth is only 8,000 to 10,000 years old and that Dinosaur fossils were put on earth to confuse us.

I wouldn't doubt it.

 

[Bfgrn]

Here is how the above CBO figures were arrived at:
A project is created, and funds from the stimulus plan applied for. The project says it will take X number of man hours to complete over Y period of time. CBO uses those numbers to calculate that means Z people will be employed to complete the project, and counts those jobs as "created or saved"

What a crock! There is no way to determine if the people hired to work on the project were new employees, nor is there any way to determine if the people working on the project would have been without work had the project not been created. At the time CBO issued this report the vast majority of projects had not even left the planning stage, they'd just been approved for receiving funds.

In reality, most of the projects are awarded to contractors which have several projects going and the workers would have been employed even without the additional project handed them by the government.

In short, they are using bogus calculations to vastly inflate the effect the stimulus had on employment. Anyone with a real brain in their skull (as opposed to the mule shit used by liberals) can figure this out without watching Fox news.

However, according to liberal liars, if we believe this CBO LIE, we are "informed", but if we choose to believe reality, we are "misinformed". What a fucking piece of typical liberal elitist "We're smarter than you" bullshit.

Economists agree: Stimulus created nearly 3 million jobs

Earlier this month, Zandi and co-author Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, released the most detailed assessment of the government's efforts to combat the so-called Great Recession. Neither economist is regarded as a partisan firebrand. Zandi, for example, backed John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign and has advised members of both parties.

Their conclusion: The fiscal stimulus created 2.7 million jobs and added $460 billion to gross domestic product. Unemployment would be 11% today if the stimulus hadn't been passed and 16.5% if neither the fiscal stimulus nor the banks' rescue had been enacted, according to Zandi and Blinder. "It's pretty hard to deny that it had a measurable impact," Zandi said.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-08-30-stimulus30_CV_N.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html?hp

 

[PostmodernProphet]

It (TARP) was initiated by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson while George W. Bush was president, NOT when Barack Obama was president or Geithner was Treasury Secretary. I am aware Geithner was the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time

and if you had bothered to read the article I linked you would have known that Geithner, as head of the FRBNY, was instrumental in putting together the TARP bailout in November of 2008.....as I recall one of the reasons put forward for making him the Treasury Secretary was his familiarity with the plan and how to implement it.....

 

[PostmodernProphet]

The fiscal stimulus created 2.7 million jobs

given the fact that unemployment went up instead of down, that is an absurd conclusion.....

 

[RockX]

A poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a "project" run out of the University of Maryland, was the toast of the left-wingers last week for its finding that Fox News viewers were the most "misinformed" during the 2010 election cycle. Sadly, few of the news pieces on this poll mentioned that WorldPublicOpinion.org is funded in part by such far left-wing organizations as the Ben and Jerry's Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, the United States Institute of Peace, and the George Soros backed Tides Foundation.

The report was big news throughout the lefty blogs and the Old Media, as well. Longtime Internet lefty site Slate blurbed the report assuming the fact that Fox fans are misinformed was obvious. The New York Time's Brian Stelter reported the poll but didn't bother to try and size up the source, reporting it as straight news. Extreme leftist columnist Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer also treated the claim as fact. Associated Content did as well.

Even our "friends" to the north accepted the report as fact. Canada's Globe and Mail accepted the all-Fox-fans-are-dumb meme as gospel truth and so did the Toronto Star.

One Mainstream Media columnist took quite a bit of time, though, to debunk some of the talking points -- talking points that were themselves "misinformed." The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik wrote quite an extensive piece informing his readers that the all-Fox-fans-are-dumb meme was not quite as axiomatic as the left-wingers were trying to make us all believe.

Still, even Zurawick didn't report that the poll itself was commissioned and paid for by George Soros-backed organizations as can be clearly seen on the WorldPublicOpinion.org website.

Fox News did have an amusing retort to this skewed poll.


Asked for comment on the study, Fox News seemingly dismissed the findings. In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, 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.”

It was a pretty amusing point. Can we trust the word of a notorious “party school”? But, again, even that quip, as amusing as it is, doesn’t address the fact that a bunch of far, far left-wing NGOs paid for a study that shows conservatives are “misinformed.”

Should we be surprised that George Soros happily funded a study that said conservatives are idiots? And shouldn’t we be informed about his backing of this poll so that we can be informed about the poll’s ideological bias?

Of course we should. Unfortunately, the media didn’t do its due diligence and track these facts down.

 

[Phantasmal]

Webbway, the classic example of FAUX NEWS VIEWER! I rest my case!

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

--Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

The stimulus itself did not cause job losses. But it also did not do what Obama and his goons said it would. Unemployment shot far beyond their estimates.

--Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

It will indeed worsen the deficit. Only through a myriad of smoke and mirrors were the Dems able to create a plan that the CBO scored as positive. For any honest person, the results are going to be negative. The CBO is forced to score it based on what is on hand. But given the Medicare doc fix was not included, given that it pushed certain costs into the future etc... the health care plan will indeed add to the deficit.

--The economy is getting worse (26 points)

Over what time frame? Since the stimulus, it has gotten worse by some measures (unemployment/foreclosures/inflation on necessity items) by other measures it has improved a bit.

--Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

Deliberately misleading, which is typical of environmentalists. The question is whether MAN is causing 'dramatic shifts in the climate'. The climate is and always will be changing.

--The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

This is a Clintonian moment of the definition of a tax cut. Was the question about ANY tax cuts or was it implied/stated that it was in regards to income tax cuts?

--Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

Given that taxes on income are personal... they may have gone up.

--The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

Again, a completely irrelevant question. Given that it was Obama that handed the unions a gift while fucking over other shareholders, it is not uncommon for people to think it occurred under Obama.

--When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

I would imagine most people don't keep track of how people voted, but I would love to see how this question was worded.

--And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

This is squarely on Obama. While I don't doubt for a second that he was born in Hawaii, all Obama has to do to kill this birth certificate conspiracy is to produce his fucking birth certificate. He wants this to continue.

 

[Cancel 2018. 3]

of course biff let this analysis out of his cut and paste of the link:

Not everyone is convinced. "I can't find in my analysis that the 2009 stimulus package had much effect at all," says economist John Taylor of Stanford University.

Taylor, who served as undersecretary of the Treasury under former president George W. Bush, says the recovery that began last year stemmed from a pickup in business investment unrelated to government spending. He dismissed the Zandi-Blinder conclusions as divorced from what is actually occurring in the economy and reflecting built-in assumptions about the impact of government spending.

At issue is the so-called multiplier effect of government spending. Economists such as Taylor who are skeptical of government's pump-priming role argue that for every additional $1 of government spending, GDP increases by less than $1. Those whose models back the stimulus generally assume that $1 in government spending adds more than $1 to total output via the multiplier effect. "If you crank up government spending, it will create jobs," says Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University.

The actual multiplier changes depending upon the condition of the economy. Over the course of the business cycle, the average multiplier is less than 1, Zandi acknowledged. If unemployment is low and the government borrows money for stimulus projects — thus crowding out some private companies seeking to borrow money — the net result can be muted. But with unemployment high and the government able to borrow money for 10 years at historically low 2.5% rates, Uncle Sam's borrowing doesn't come at the expense of the private sector and the stimulus is a bigger net positive, he says.