Fox News: Dumbing Down the Bias

We all know the allegations - Fox News is biased towards the right, and dumbs down the news. Are these allegations correct? Certainly the democratic candidates for president thought so when they snubbed Fox News for their first debate. And we all know that Dick Cheney appears almost exclusively on Fox (except when he's rolling Tim Russert, but I digress).

Let's take a look a what researchers and others have found. First, World Public Opinion completed a year-long analysis of news sources. Their key finding:

[T]he frequency of [Iraq War] misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals’ primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions [about the Iraq War], while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

This comes on the heels of a recent Pew Center poll showing that Fox News viewers are among the least informed on current events.

In addition, researchers Ethan Kaplan and Stefano DellaVigna analyzed the question of Fox News bias by looking at the impact of Fox News on voting patterns. From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

[Kaplan and Della Vigna] found that the introduction of Fox News had a small but statistically significant effect on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gained an estimate of between 0.4 and 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News. They also find that Fox News had a significant effect on Senate vote share and on voter turnout. Their estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican according to a first audience measure, and 11 to 28 percent according to a second, more restrictive audience measure.

Here's some other info on the Fox New Bias:

• Media Matters reviews a series of internal Fox memos.
• A documentary on Fox News - Outfoxed.
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting covers Brit Hume (from the way back machine - pre 9/11).
• Journalists have found Fox News to be, far and away, the most conservative news source.
• The public outing of terrorist who, unfortunately, wasn't really a terrorist.
• Osama, oops I meant Obama, attended a Madrassa, as reported by Fox. Nice.

Dick Cheney spouts the big lie again

Dick Cheney is once again spouting his lies about the supposed link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein link. What's so laughable - and telling - is Cheney told the whopper to Rush Limbaugh on-air yesterday.

[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi]He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.

Is there any wonder why such a significant portion of the population believes in the fairy-tale of the Saddam-AQ link? Hell, no. Not when the kool-aid drinkers are newsing up on a steady diet Rush and Fox and Friends. This kind of information gathering is like trying to lose weight on the McDonalds Diet.

So, what would make big Dick spout the big lie again? Just the release of a declassified Pentagon report that AQ and the Saddam government were not working together before the invasion. Here's a PDF of the report.