Fox News's detrimental impact on America

There is nothing wrong with having commentaryAn objective study showed that the straight news coverage on Fox is one of the least biased in media. The commentary is biased, but so are newspaper editorial pages and columnists, and every politician in Washington. There cannot be a debate without diverging opinion, and America is better off for Fox bringing diverse viewpoints to the people.Audiences form their own conclusionsPro and the studies he cites make the wrong assumption that if someone has a wrong idea the person must have gotten the misconception from the media. At the time of the 2008 election, a Zogby poll showed “57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.” [8. http://tinyurl.com...] Should we blame the media for this wild misconception? No, it's safe to say that not one major media outlet ever claimed Republicans were in control of Congress. Democrats figured it out the wrong conclusion for themselves based upon the pseudo-logic that since the economy is a disaster and Republicans must be at fault, then Republicans must be controlling Congress. Nothing was ever said by any of the media, but Democrats "figured it out." Republicans did not have the misconception about who controlled Congress. The pattern is that people are more informed about the opposition than they are about their own their side of issues. Democrats did not know that Joe Biden was knocked out of a previous presidential run under charges of plagiarism, but Democrats knew more about allegations against Sarah Palin than did Republicans. So if you want to produce a study that shows your opponent to be misinformed, the key is to ask questions that you side is more likely to know than the other side. Those are the particular points that you think are most important for everyone to know. 1. Fox News viewers are generally as well informed as other media viewers The network morning shows are news programs produced by the network news departments. Those who watch the network morning shows have slightly more misconceptions that Fox News. [2. in R2] So should we conclude that the network morning news shows are spreading misconceptions? No what it points to is the merging of news with entertainment, which the networks began decades ago with their morning shows, and Fox has cashed in on. The viewers are only slightly interested in news and form misconceptions on their own. The surveys ask difficult questions about hard-news stories, but Fox, like the network morning shows covers many more topics than hard news, with topics I listed in R2. So the positive impact is with informing people on the spectrum of subjects. Pro claimed that a study [his R2 ref 7] showed the misconceptions came from Fox News. That is not true. The study only correlated audiences with news sources. Neither the study nor Pro cited a single misconception that was promoted by Fox. Pro in his case did not cite any misconceptions made by Fox that were repeated by the audience. This is like Democrats believing Republicans ran Congress. The FDU study claimed to show that Fox News viewers had "significantly more misconceptions" than people who said they watched no news. But why would someone who watched no news agree to participate in a survey about news media? Only about 9% of Americans respond to phone surveys at all. [9. http://tinyurl.com...] There were only 862 respondents to the FDU survey, and I suspect that almost no one uninterested in news would respond. The survey goes on to adjust the survey percentages to match national demographics. FDU conceals the actual numbers of respondents in each category, so it's not possible to check the claim that the difference is statistically significant. The most likely explanation of the outcome is statistical variation. This is likely because other surveys do not agree with the FDU claim. PolitiFact found John Stewart to have been false when he accused Fox News watchers of being "the most consistently misinformed media viewers." PolitiFact says "it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. ... It’s simply not true that "every poll" shows that result. So we rate his claim False.'" [10. http://tinyurl.com...] 2. Pro does not dispute the data showing viewers of programs like O'Reilly are as well informed as any media audience. [2] Therefore, my claim stands that Fox is serving the well-informed segment of the audience. there cannot be widespread misconceptions among those viewers or they would not have been rated in the most-informed group. 3. Pro concedes that Fox is a significant source of political debate. But he says that hurts America because sometimes commentators like O'Reilly lose their temper. (If rants are harmful, DDO must be death to America.) Rants on Fox are rare, while Fox is hosting dozens of short debates each day. Going into a rant always looks bad, so when O'Reilly does that he's making leftists look good by comparison. That doesn't make Fox bad for America. Flamboyant commentators are common these days, and O'Reilly is Mr. Polite compared CNN's Pierce Morgan [11. http://tinyurl.com...] or MSNBC's Ed Schultze [12. http://tinyurl.com...] Americans are well-accustomed to TV hosts blowing steam out their ears. It's rare on Fox and doesn't offset the good done by giving viewers information and serious debate. The most common format for Fox confrontations are a Republican Congressman squared ff against a Democrat. Both being experienced politicians, these are typically polite to the point of boredom. Before Fox, CNN had highly confrontational debates on their Crossfire program, and 60 Minutes had Point/Counterpoint. No one thought they were harmful. Fox is only "looked on with disdain" by the fraction of the Left that believes opposing viewpoints ought to be suppressed. The left supports violent confrontation in the streets by movements like Occupy Wall street, but when someone is even vocal about a different viewpoint, they think America is harmed. 4. Pro grants that Fox covers stories not covered by other media. Pro claims that all such stories are smears against liberals. On the day after the Benghazi attack witnesses evacuated from the consulate told intelligence agents that there was no demonstration at the consulate. Its perfectly appropriate to ask why two weeks later President Obama was attributing the attack to a demonstration over a YouTube video. Pro says that he cannot figure out why Hillary Clinton thinks Fox was fair. I think Hillary Clinton is the definitive judge of that issue. Some guests on Fox made pointed criticisms of Clinton, just as Professor Hill makes pointed criticisms of capitalism on Fox. Fairness comes from having an opposing viewpoint, not from suppressing opinion. Media Matters (MM) is a semi-rational hate site with a Fox obsession. An internal memo revealed plans for an "aggressive campaign that it outlines against Fox News' credibility involves hiring private investigators to learn about Fox employees, driving away Fox advertisers, creating a Fox SWAT team to respond to its coverage, ..." [13. http://tinyurl.com...] MM points to Bret Hume quoting Obama's half-brother as saying he expected Obama to be favorable to Muslims. Obama did spent his youth in Muslim Indonesia. The next day Hume corrected the source for the story. Media Matters said he didn't make a full correction of the source and absurdly concluded that Fox was saying Obama was a Muslim. Karl Rove correctly claimed the Democrats blocked Fannie Mae reform, but Media Matters said he lied. Rove in his book Courage and Consequence provided detailed descriptions of the three attempts to reform Fannie. 5. Stossel and other libertarians have a substantial audience on Fox. Pro says that libertarians aren't watching because they use websites. If so, then non-libertarians are watching the libertarian shows. That's a positive influence. 6. Pro did not contest.