Jon Stewart appeared on Fox News Sunday and claimed that Fox News viewers are “the most consistently uninformed” Americans. The host of the show, Chis Wallace, was a gentleman and let it go. The Washington Post’s Politifact team thought it would be worth looking into, and found Stewart’s claim to be false.
The way Stewart phrased the comment, it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. The evidence needs to support the view that the data shows they are “consistently” misinformed — a term he used not once but three times. It’s simply not true that “every poll” shows that result. So we rate his claim False.
News Busters has more. And Outside the Beltway’s James Joyner pointed out that at least one of the polls relied on to judge the knowledge of Fox News viewers relied on progressives’ definitions of facts.
Presumably, Stewart was basing his survey on a December study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. But David Zurawik correctly points out that the questions were absurdly biased and, indeed, sometimes treated liberal opinion as fact.
Be sure to follow the links. Also, one of those studies was thoroughly debunked here and here.
Update: Da TechGuy linked – thanks!
Tags: claims, false, Fox News viewers, Jon Stewart, lie, Politifact, uninformed
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Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is a logical fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction. Sometimes this may be repeated until challenges dry up, at which point it is asserted as fact due to its not being contradicted (argumentum ad nauseam). In other cases its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies.
And this……..
Is precisely what the left has been doing for decades in an attempt to redefine many things. Patriotism. War. Climate Change. Gay, Lesbian, straight. Marriage. Illegal Immigration.
Today. In America. We are fighting back and we are……….
Uninformed.
Lairs all and our failure to push back on every assertion then makes LIES……..the TRUTH.
Its always been their plan.
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[...] Now about Polifact I can take or leave ‘em myself, but the Morning Joe crowd normally treats it as Gospel so they decided to pull omit the uncomfortable part in brackets (Ephesians 5:22-24 anyone?). Polifact shouldn’t feel bad, they didn’t report on the Crowder e-mail either. [...]
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PolitiFact got seriously dressed down over this—in particular, over their failure to distinguish between “misinformed” and “uninformed.” Stewart and the polls don’t say that FOX News viewers don’t receive information; they say that FOX viewers receive incorrect information. There’s a world of difference between the two.
http://www.politifact.com/trut…
Such ineptitude is inexplicable. Did PolitiFact toss a softball to FOX?
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Politifact was wrong. Stewart said “misinformed” and was right. They set about disproving that he said Fox viewers were “ill-informed ” or “uninformed”. The latter two mean entirely different things from the former, and while we do not expect Fox viewers to actually look them up for themselve as you are busy fighting whatever fight you are fighting, or taking back the country or defending morality, or whatever pompous martyrdom you profess to be on the right side of, go to Politifact today for the real facts about this one, and the lightning speed with which Politifact’s fact checking has been fact checked. Ultimately, he was pointing out Fox News perpetual dissemination of false news stories, like WMD in Iraq (although many news agencies got that one wrong), Sadam’s involvement in 911 and with Al Qaeda, the birther issue, selective “news” editing, and on and on.
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Jon Stewart does not believe one word that he says. And he does this all with a straight face. True, Wallace could have been much rougher on him.
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Why waste words? The proof is in the ratings. Fox News is the most watched for a reason. Maybe more liberals should start watching. They seem to be the most misinformed and uninformed bunch there is.
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Accuracy is based upon viewership (ratings)? Wow then pro wrestling must be real – whodathunkit?
I suspect it is most watched because “birds of a feather….” And there are a lot of people in flyover land that are really afraid of the way the world is going so they huddle together and bash everything that is new (aka liberal. And Faux plays into their hands.
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Stewart was only wrong that FNC viewers were *consistently* the most misinformed in *every* poll. In fact, they were only the most “misinformed” in two polls, while a third poll that broke the numbers down by individual shows found that they were just near the bottom of the rankings. Much of a muchness – the point is what Stewart said is not obviously false. Moreover, as pointed out above, critics of Politifact evaluated the wrongs statement: Stewart said FNC viewers were *mis*informed, whereas Politifact researched whether polls had found FNC viewers were *un*informed.
The real question isn’t whether Stewart was wrong about what the polls say (the polls themselves had some problems). The real question is whether FNC viewers really are misinformed. Whatever the answer to *that* question is, conservatives have to be receptive to the answer; they can’t dismiss every fact or embarrassing piece of information as part of a mainstream media conspiracy. It’s ok to be wrong sometimes — what’s worse is failing to recognize it.
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