People Who Get Thier Info from Cable News More Likley to be Wrong. Fox News Audience are the most Ignorant on Iraq.

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

The defining issue of our time is the media. Whatever issue you care most about, media coverage of that issue is likely a key stumbling block to real, progressive change.

On May 26, we wrote that "The dominant political force of our time is the media." Last week, we elaborated on that, looking back over the past dozen years to establish that "[n]o matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media."

This week, we turn our attention to another point we outlined on May 26:

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

What we meant by that, but didn't fully explain, was that more than any other issue, the media affect everything else. The Iraq war, for obvious reasons, is incredibly important, but it has little impact on outsourcing. Global warming may be among "the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization," with dire consequences for the survival of the planet -- but we won't face that challenge as long as the media continue to falsely portray global warming as a matter of serious scientific debate.

Perhaps no recent issue offers a better example of how much flawed news reporting can shape the decisions we make as a nation than does the Iraq war.

Six months into the Iraq war, a study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that most people who get their news from Fox News, CNN, or the three broadcast networks had serious mistaken beliefs about Iraq -- that U.S.-led forces had already found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there, that links between Iraq and Al Qaeda had been found, that world public opinion approved of the war in Iraq, or some combination of the three. Eighty percent of Fox viewers held at least one of these mistaken beliefs, as did 71 percent of CBS viewers, 61 percent of ABC viewers, and 55 percent of NBC and CNN viewers -- clear majorities in all cases. Nearly half of those who got their news from the print media held one of these mistaken beliefs; among consumers of public broadcasting, only 23 percent did.

These mistaken beliefs had serious consequences: People who believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were more likely to support the war; people who supported the war were more likely to vote for President Bush, and so on. The world's greatest democracy made a series of decisions about war and peace; life and death; and about the world we will pass on to our children, all based on faulty information.

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