Saturday, December 18, 2010

Surely the Founding Fathers would want to see this civic ideal come to pass.

An informed citizenry would be the best counter-influence against lies, videos, and outright demagoguery. An informed citizenry will be one of those civically-intended checks and balances ...

Right?

Not if there is a failure to take into account a need for citizens to learn critical thinking. If that doesn't happen ... this is the sad failure we all have to live with .... dimwits who don't know they are dimwits living among us.


Fox News viewers are much more likely than others to believe false information about American politics, a new study concludes.
The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, judged how likely consumers of various news outlets and publications were to believe misinformation about a wide range of political issues. Overall, 90% of respondents said they felt they had heard false information being given to them during the 2010 election campaign. However, while consumers of just about every news outlet believed some information that was false, the study found that Fox News viewers, regardless of political information, were "significantly more likely" to believe that:
  • --Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)
  • --Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)
  • --The economy is getting worse (26 points)--Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)
  • --The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)
  • --Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)
  • --The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)
  • --When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)
  • --And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)
In addition, the study said, increased viewership of Fox News led to increased belief in these false stories.

 Of course the obvious conclusion may be even scarier

... the unfortunate intersection of a dimwit with unlimited funds with which to self-entertain forms a group of broadcast dimwits who are in truth no more critically thoughtful than their gullible broadcast targets.

The blind leading the blind with all of them forcefully trying to insist there are no skid marks in their underwear.

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