Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

we report, you decide

An interesting factoid that came up in my reading for class last night: People who watched Fox News (particularly if they followed the news closely via Fox News) were more likely to hold certain key misperceptions about the U.S. war with Iraq, according to an October 2003 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (at the University of Maryland) and polling group Knowledge Networks. (“Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War” (PDF file) - 10/02/03)

Researchers tied their findings to three key misperceptions:
• “Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found”
• “Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq”
• “World public opinion favored the U.S. going to war with Iraq”

The study also found that people who tended to support President Bush also were more likely to hold one or more misperceptions about the war. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, people who got their news from PBS or NPR (regardless of their political tendencies), or who did not support the president, were less likely to be misinformed.

I need to read the poll summary more closely to see if the researchers found a corrollary between support for the president and media outlet used. The summary mainly pointed out separage linkages between support and misperceptions, and between media outlet and misperceptions.

It would be interesting to see if/how public perception on these questions has changed since October.

Side note — Among the outside public opinion polls the report referenced was a June 2003 Washington Post/ABC poll whose results frustrated the devil out of me.