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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (356849)	11/2/2007 2:53:05 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573691

More Evidence FOX News Watchers Are Ignorant Reported by Ellen - June 17, 2005 newshounds.us Last night, a caller named Jason, from Grand Rapids, called The Alan Colmes show to complain about Dick Durbin's condemnation of the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Claiming to get his news from FOX, Jason proved that he got most of his facts wrong. "Evidently Richard (I couldn't understand what Jason said next, but it sounded to me as if he was using a middle initial M, N, or F. Durbin's real middle initial is J.) Durbin does not watch FOX News or watch the polls because I believe FOX stated a poll today that - what is it - almost 60% of the people agree or don't have a problem with what's going on or the treatment of the detainees in Gitmo." Jason was wrong again. The latest FOX poll (Question 17) says that 43% said that prison conditions at Guantanamo Bay met accepted standards, down from 67% who thought conditions there were acceptable in July, 2002. Next, Jason complained about Durbin comparing prisoners' treatment at Gitmo to the Nazi's. Colmes said that if Jason disagreed with Durbin's statements, he ought to condemn Senator Rick Santorum's comments likening Democrats' complaining about eliminating the filibuster to the Nazis complaining, "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine." Jason made the "distinction" that "Durbin was trashing the troops." Comment: Durbin never trashed the troops. He quoted from an FBI agent's report describing prisoners chained to the floor, without food or water, being subjected to extreme temperatures. As quoted in the Washington Post, Durbin said, "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings," Colmes discussed that with Jason. Jason, unable to argue back, used the Hannity tactic of changing the topic. "As far as you quoting Andrew Napolitano about the Geneva Convention, he couldn't even make it on the People's Court." Colmes said Napolitano left People's Court voluntarily to become the senior legal analyst at Fox News. In fact, I could find no record of Napolitano ever having worked for People's Court. My Google search showed that Napolitano worked for a show called Power of Attorney which he did leave voluntarily in order to work at FOX News. Jason asked, "How does (Napolitano) know the Geneva Conventions?" (Comment: Due to a tape malfunction, I missed Colmes' comments about Napolitano and the Geneva Conventions but I surmised that Napolitano said something in support of Colmes' position that they should be observed at Guantanamo Bay.) Colmes answered, "Because he read it. When was the last time you read it?" Jason: I have not read it. No, I will admit it but I listen to Fox News... I rest my case.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (356849)	11/2/2007 2:55:54 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573691

Fact-Free News By Harold Meyerson washingtonpost.com Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A23 Ever worry that millions of your fellow Americans are walking around knowing things that you don't? That your prospects for advancement may depend on your mastery of such arcana as who won the Iraqi war or where exactly Europe is? Then don't watch Fox News. The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong. Researchers from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint project of several academic centers, some of them based at the University of Maryland) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm, have spent the better part of the year tracking the public's misperceptions of major news events and polling people to find out just where they go to get things so balled up. This month they released their findings, which go a long way toward explaining why there's so little common ground in American politics today: People are proceeding from radically different sets of facts, some so different that they're altogether fiction. In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three. The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were "the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions." Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three. Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system confirmed. But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who watch PBS believed this to be the case. Misperceptions can also be the result of inattention, of course. If you nod off for just a nanosecond in the middle of Tom Brokaw intoning, "U.S. inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction today," you could think we'd just uncovered Hussein's nuclear arsenal. So the wily researchers also controlled for intensity of viewership, and concluded that, "in the case of those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly increases the likelihood of misperceptions." Particularly when that news includes hyping every false lead in Iraq as the certain prelude to uncovering a massive WMD cache. One question inevitably raised by these findings is whether Fox News is failing or succeeding. Over at CBS, the news that 71 percent of viewers hold one of these mistaken notions should be cause for concern, but whether such should be the case at Fox because 80 percent of their viewers are similarly mistaken is not at all clear. Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the other guys at Fox have long demonstrated a clearer commitment to changing public policy than to reporting it, and an even clearer commitment to reporting it in such a way as to change it. Take a wild flight of fancy with me and assume for just a moment that one major goal over at Fox is to ensure Bush's reelection. Surely, anyone who believes that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were in cahoots, that we've found the WMD and that Bush is revered among the peoples of the world -- all of these known facts to nearly half the Fox viewers -- is a good bet to be a Bush voter in next year's contest. By this standard -- moving votes into Bush's column and keeping them there -- Fox has to be judged a stunning success. It's not so hot on conveying information as such, but mere empiricism must seem so terribly vulgar to such creatures of refinement as Murdoch and Ailes. The writer will answer questions about this column during a Live Online discussion at 4 p.m. today at www.washingtonpost.com. meyersonh@washpost.com © 2003 The Washington Post Company

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (356849)	11/3/2007 3:42:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573691

Z, > Were those cases of the media manufacturing stories or of someone tipping the media off to these stories at an opportune time and the media biting on them? In those two cases, the media was actively trying to pursue those stories because the "opportune times" for breaking those stories were at hand. LA Times collected up the Gropenator allegations, then sat on them for a few months until just a week before the CA recall election. It was plain and obvious that they wanted to make the biggest impact they could. Look, naive one, there were rumors/stories long before your gropenator governor ran for office. It was nothing new......the media simply took advantage of it when he ran for governor. He was a typical movie star believing that every woman wanted him and when they didn't, he got a little forceful. As for the Bush situation, its all true.........Bush was a national guard slacker. CBS simply screwed it up. And they were revealing his lack of character in order to protect the nation and its democracy. If you weren't so caught up protecting your boys, you would be praising their efforts.