Unfair and Imbalanced, and Now There's Proof

On Oct. 2, the Program on International Policy and Attitudes (PIPA), an ultra-respectable, non-partisan research institute, released a study titled "Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War." The report concluded that "a substantial portion of the [American] public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false, or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community." The three biggest misperceptions were the beliefs that:

1) Iraq either was directly involved in 9/11 or provided substantial support to Al Qaeda;
2) weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq or even used during the war itself; and 
3) world public opinion supported the war.

Call it the American Al Jazeera. Call it the Bush News Agency. Call it whatever you want, but don't call it fair and balanced.

Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, as any half-sensible, half-informed American knows, leans hard to the right in its politics, despite its patently Orwellian slogan "fair and balanced." Now there's clear evidence that FOX News has contributed - more than its fair share - to the misperceptions that Americans have about the conflict in Iraq.

The study also found that the extent of these misperceptions varied significantly according to where the respondents were getting most of their news.  

None of the main news sources the study included came away with entirely clean hands, but PIPA found that "FOX News watchers were most likely to hold misperceptions - and were three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions." CBS came next, followed by ABC (ditto), NBC, CNN, and the print media. People who got most of their news from PBS or NPR held the fewest misperceptions. Crucially, the study controlled for demographic variables across the audiences, so the results cannot be explained away as the effect of demographic variation. Republicans who watch FOX, for instance, are more likely to experience the three key misperceptions than Republicans who listen to PBS-NPR (54% to 32%). (Click here to read more about the study's methodology).

Unfortunately, watching more news is not the solution - it is the problem. PIPA found that "[a]mong those who primarily watch FOX, those who pay more attention are more likely to have misperceptions." (Again, the other networks are not excluded from this finding; only those respondents who follow the print media, the study reported, gain more accurate perceptions by paying more attention to the news. But nonetheless, Fox was the worst of the lot).

While all journalists should be sobered by this study, one suspects that the cadre of ideologues in charge of content at FOX News just won't care, or will dismiss the study as they dismiss so much else that runs against their interests or their worldview. But the findings represent empirical confirmation of what many people knew about Fox already. They give the lie to FOX's pretense of providing balance to a political dialogue that Rupert Murdoch and his ilk accuse of "liberal bias."

No serious journalist pretends to be able to achieve perfect objectivity, but the fundamental ethic of the profession holds that a search for the truth, and an accurate presentation of what that search turns up, must be undertaken in good faith, and with great respect for the effect this news has on the audience. What FOX News has done is to let its ideology corrupt its journalism, and unless they are called on it, this threatens to corrupt our democracy. When a major network that sells itself as the voice of reason and neutrality actively hinders the public from accurately understanding a conflict that will cost so much blood and treasure, Americans should shudder. And they should switch the channel.

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