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Fox News doesn't make you dumb, it just appeals to people who are already dumb.

Well the fact that at one point FOX viewers thought Obama is a radical Muslim is proof enough.

Interesting titles
The one on Think Progress states "Fox News viewers rank last." But when you look at the graph it shows they are not last. The person who made the title either has low graph interpretation skills or is trying to deceive readers. My money is on the second choice.

I find it interesting people who watch the O'Reilly factor (On Fox) and people who listened to Rush Limbaugh scored very high as well.

I don't even want to get into all the wholes in the study.

damn those pizzly bears....all bears are killing machines and should all be put down asap

Personally, I never needed a survey to tell me that.

I think people that work for Fox News should all be sent to Iraq and given a ***** humV and no body Armor so they can take a stroll through Bagdad on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

I find Fox News to be entertaining because they don't just report the news like CNN they actually have reactions to it. Yet I do find that most of their opinions are usually ridiculous.

O'Reilly is #4 on that list, and he's on fox news.
this poll is retarded, how is "fox news" seperate from the O'Reilly factor? O'Reilly is fox's #1 in viewership. (#1 in all cable viewership as well)
am i missing something?

What a surprise!

too bad fox viewers tend to also vote

It's probably dumb to call other people dumb. Let's all move along!

How is possible that 31% of the country cannot name the Vice President.

Do all of those hunting jokes go right over their head.

We really need an island where we ship these people off to so they cannot injure anyone with their stupidity.

The poll information also reveals by analysis of the results that the idiots watching Fox news are Black Females age 18-29.

JCSaint
Do you honestly think that is the case?

Even the article states "nearly" dead last and you know that is there for sensationalism to make it sell and catch some eyeballs.

If we are going to get into "margins" of error, why not say O'Reilly and Limbaugh had the most knowledgeable viewers?

But nice try.

I was more surprised that Rush and O'reilly fans were almost as knowledgeable as the Daily show while the evening/morning/local news people ranked in the same area as Fox News. And then the online discussion blogs were right next to Fox News viewers? How can you blog and discuss the news and not know the basic facts?

I have to cringe when people use things they've seen on the daily show as evidence during discussions. It's like when people use Wikipedia links as proof on the internet.

Interesting...
I took the News Quiz @ http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/

"You scored better than 96% of the general public on our News IQ quiz. The average person between 36 and 59 years old scored better than 54% of the public while the average person under the age of 30 did better than 39%."

It is interesting that TDS's demographics are 18 to 30 and that age group ranked dead last.

Also Stewart/Colbert, due to the nature of their shows, are able to basically say "you're a retard" to whoever needs to be told it, and the portion of the public who gets insulted by said comment can't really complain because it's not national broadcast news and they don't have to watch it.

Fox News could never get away with things like that because they have painted themselves into a corner of "political correctness" held by its army of leftists who are just dying to raise their "I'm offended" flag if their views get criticized.

It's just boring isn't it? 30 mins of a Fox News broadcast just feels like a glorified "OMG OMG OMG BUSH OMG WAR GTA3" followed by some ***** hometown story with a happy ending in an attempt to appear like they are on the same side as us. I don't buy it...

The University of Maryland survey they mentioned in the article seems flawed. Lifted from the article it states that:
"University of Maryland researchers studied the public’s belief in three false claims — that Iraq possessed WMD, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and that there was international support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq."

There is some evidence that Iraq had some leftover chemical weapons. Some intelligence reports that coalition forces found some. The British Iraq Survey Group has not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but [there is] the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability.

So someone could be extremely well informed and believe that Iraq possessed WMDs. As in one or more wepons of mass destruction. Seems like the question would have to be worded to account for this.

"There was international support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq"

This is a loaded statement. There was SOME international support for the US invasion of Iraq, just not UN support. Right leaning respondents would naturally answer "yes" to this "misperception" since some support sufficiently constitutes "international support" from their point of view. Left leaning respondents would naturally say "no" since in their view the coalition was not enough to be considered "international support." Thus this poll is naturally going to yield results that shows left-leaning respondents as "more knowledgeable." The other two statements aren't as ambiguous, (although the WMD can also be considered unfair due to Iraq's past possession of WMD) but the last statement really should have been replaced with "The UN Security Council approved the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq" to get a more accurate poll. Frankly, this poll is flawed and is pretty much meaningless. (Interesting, however, is the large difference between O'Reilly and Fox)

For reference:

"About the Survey

Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International among a nationwide sample of 1,502 adults, 18 years of age or older, from February 1-13, 2007. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Results from a separate survey in which we tested "multiple choice" versions of key questions are based on 1,017 interviews conducted March 9-12, 2007 under the direction of Opinion Research Corporation. The error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points (95% confidence) for these questions.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls. "
----------------------------------

Now, some 1-1 comparisons... as some questions were multiple choice from one survey and others were open-ened voice.

Network evening news 38
fox news 35
... not exactly a statistically significant difference in this poll.


Colbert 54
O'Reilly 51
... again, not exactly a significant difference.

Oh, and isn't O'Reilly on fox news?

Once again... a digg sumbitter is twisting facts and taking statistics out of context to "prove" a point.

That quiz is BS. I've never seen a more left sided political quiz in my life.

then how can both Stewart and Colbert openly insult the intelligence of their studio audience while the audience is totally ignorant that they're being mocked? that's what makes up 50% of the laughs for me...

These poorly informed Fox people are the same goofballs complaining about the supposed "dumbing down" of society. Fitting really.

PEW asked 23 questions about current-event related items (which party controls Congress, name a branch of Islam, which way does Chief Justice John Roberts lean, etc.), and categorized people based on the percentage of answers they got correct. Then they asked the respondents about the sources they received their news from and charted the correlation between them and knowledge rankings, concluding "There are substantial differences in the knowledge levels of the audiences for different news outlets. However, there is no clear connection between news formats and what audiences know."

The study also mentioned that "Men, on average, knew more than women, all other factors being equal. Older Americans - particularly those 50 years old or older - did better than younger people. Whites scored better than blacks, while more affluent Americans knew more than those with lower household incomes."

thinkprogress.org decided to summarize the study as "Survey: Daily Show/Colbert Viewers Most Knowledgable, Fox Viewers Rank Last" instead of a perhaps more accurate, yet less PC, "Survey: Men know more than women; whites know more than blacks"

fox news sucks straight up

Will someone please create this in picture book form? I got confused about half way through it.

hey hey ho ho, what were we talking about again?

Oh yeah, FAUX MEWS SUX!!

This study isn't news. It's already been shown that Daily Show/Colbert viewers take Fox News viewers to school.

Why does truth hate America so much?

@reddevil3

That's a pretty funny, do you read minds or would you like to substantiate that with a reference?

actually Local news and Network morning show viewers ranked the lowest.

Correlation does not imply causation

That's funny, because people who listen to Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly were tied within statistical error with Daily Show Viewers. thinkprogress.org failed to mention that in their short hit piece.

meh, i'm disappointed that O'Reilly/Limbaugh weren't significantly lower in the poll. Fox News are bunch of retards, sure, but O'Reilly is the real one dishing out the damage.

If you digg deep enough, the info is not accurate. The statistical method of polling was skewed.

Are people forgetting that O'Reilly has a somewhat different viewership than the rest of the FOX News lineup? Though O'Reilly is considered a raving conservative, in line with FOX News' general slant, his show is watched by a lot of people for the simple fact that he's the most well known political commentator today. Conservatives tune it to see what amazing thing he's going to say next, and some liberals tune in to see what amazingly idiotic thing he says next.

The results for FOX News and O'Reilly are vastly different, but then again, I think if you compared the results for The Daily Show and Comedy Central, they'd be pretty different, too.

The level of partisan ***** on Digg is frightening. Most of you cannot, apparently, read and understand basic statistical information and just Digg down anything that goes against your ideology. If you read the entire summary of findings http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319, you will see that this poll actually indicates that people who watch the Daily Show and O'Reilly Factor are a lot more well informed than the national average.

FTA: There are substantial differences in the knowledge levels of the audiences for different news outlets. However, there is no clear connection between news formats and what audiences know. Well-informed audiences come from cable (Daily Show/Colbert Report, O'Reilly Factor), the internet (especially major newspaper websites), broadcast TV (NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) and radio (NPR, Rush Limbaugh's program). The less informed audiences also frequent a mix of formats: broadcast television (network morning news shows, local news), cable (Fox News Channel), and the internet (online blogs where people discuss news events).

People who watch ORF are 3 points below people who watch DS/CR - that is within the margin of error of the survey. People who watch ORF and DS are 16 and 19 points above the national average. This does not support thinkprogresses' claim that viewers of OFR are stupid, far from it. They "thinkprogress" are betting that people will view the fact that ORF is 2nd to last in a group of 5 as "people who watch Fox are dumb" They don't want you to see that that list of 5 is "the top 5".

Just so you know, I am a DS/CR viewer and I do not listen to or watch Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh.

Anything that comes from Think Progress is leftist propaganda and should be dugg down. This is one of the worst sites on the web. And no, I don't watch Fox news.

"Despite significant technology shifts, however, Pew found that “today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago.”

I think the above finding from the post has me more concerned than where knowledgeable people get their news and information.

As many have pointed out already, this is yet another sad, fake post from the fakest site on the web.

It's hilarious how threatened the left is by Fox. They obviously think the only free speech should be theirs.

well, we all sort of knew this already. but i will keep the link to this, the next time i come across some stupid fox-propaganda spouting moron.

If the News agrees with you, it's "Unbiased and Reliable"
If the News disagrees with you, it's either left-wing propganda or right-wing propoganda, depending on which way it disagrees.

People don't wnat news that may inform them and may actually change their mind, they just want to have their biases supported and justified by 'authority' and mob-support