Mike Hicks

By the Numbers

According to a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, only 20% of the viewers of Fox News Channel are in touch with reality. In fact, none of the commercial TV news outlets can claim that over half of their audience knows the truth: CBS rates 30%, ABC 39%, and NBC and CNN are tied at 45%. Print media works out to 53%, and people who tune in to NPR and PBS rate at 77%.

Okay, it's wrong to say that these people are totally in touch with reality, but they did manage to correctly determine three things:

1. The majority of the world's population did not favor the U.S.-led war on Iraq
2. No substantial connections have been found between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
3. Weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq

Anyway, there's more info in this poorly HTML-ized press release. Here's a nicer table of the data from that page:

Network	No Misperceptions	One or More
Fox	20%	80%
CBS	30%	70%
ABC	39%	61%
NBC	45%	55%
CNN	45%	55%
Print	53%	47%
NPR/PBS	77%	23%

Posted by mike at November 20, 2003 07:56 PM | News , Politics , September 11th , TV , The Media , War | TrackBack