'Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study'

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study
First Posted: 11/21/11 05:28 PM ET Updated: 11/21/11 06:06 PM ET


Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.

Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson, explained in a statement, "Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.

Opa Shale wrote:Do you think this news will be reported on Fox?

Forgiveness Man wrote:This is a laughable craphole of a newstory. We're asking a silly question to residents of NEW JERSEY and we're going to try to make broad statements about it? lol It's a laughable joke. And considering the notoriously left-wing biased source(Huffington Post), this poll would be about as meaningful as a Fox News Poll showing that people who watch CNN know less than people who watch Fox. (And I notice we're comparing Fox News viewers to those who watch NO news at all only. Curious setup.)

Conservative commentators regularly survey liberals and they don't even know basic information about who their political leaders are. So yeah, there's plenty of "polls" on both sides to prove that the others are idiots. Yet the fact that I know so many liberals who hate Fox News will be all over this just makes the entire thing all the more laughable. People and their loaded polls, so much stock in such a pointless passtime. No wonder nothing useful ever gets done.

(And for the record, this is coming from somebody who does NOT watch Fox News and does not like having it on in the house. )

CeCe wrote:

I doubt it. They're busy promoting Megyn Kelly's new show "Cooking With Pepper Spray".