-Caveat Lector-
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We report, you get it wrong By Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you
watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the
Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released
in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert
Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is
that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by
the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy
Attitudes (PIPA).
Based on several nationwide surveys it
conducted with California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as
well as the results of other polls, PIPA found that 48 percent of
the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links
between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group; 22 percent thought
troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq; and 25
percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's
going to war with Iraq. All three are misperceptions.
The
report, Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, also found that
the more misperceptions held by the respondent, the more likely it
was that s/he both supported the war and depended on commercial
television for news about it.
The study is likely to stoke a
growing public and professional debate over why mainstream news
media - especially the broadcast media - were not more skeptical
about the Bush administration's pre-war claims, particularly
regarding Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles and ties with al-Qaeda.
"This is a dangerously revealing study," said Marvin Kalb, a
former television correspondent and a senior fellow of the
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
While
Kalb said he had some reservations about the specificity of the
questions directed at the respondents, he noted that, "People who
have had a strong belief that there is an unholy alliance between
politics and the press now have more evidence." Fox, in particular,
has been accused of pursuing a chauvinistic agenda in its news
coverage despite its motto, "We report, you decide".
Overall, according to PIPA, 60 percent of the people
surveyed held at least one of the three misperceptions through
September. Thirty percent of respondents had none of those
misperceptions.
Surprisingly, the percentage of people
holding the misperceptions rose slightly over the last three months.
In July, for example, polls found that 45 percent of the public
believed US forces had found "clear evidence in Iraq that Hussein
was working closely with al-Qaeda". In September, 49 percent
believed that.
Likewise, those who believed troops had found
WMD in Iraq jumped from 21 percent in July to 24 percent in
September. One in five respondents said they believed that Iraq had
actually used chemical or biological weapons during the war.
In determining what factors could create the misperceptions,
PIPA considered a number of variables in the data.
It found
a high correlation between respondents with the most misperceptions
and their support for the decision to go to war. Only 23 percent of
those who held none of the three misperceptions supported the war,
while 53 percent who held one misperception did so. Of those who
believe that both WMDs and evidence of al-Qaeda ties have been found
in Iraq and that world opinion backed the United States, a whopping
86 percent said they supported war.
More specifically, among
those who believed that Washington had found clear evidence of close
ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda, two-thirds held the view that
going to war was the best thing to do. Only 29 percent felt that way
among those who did not believe that such evidence had been found.
Another factor that correlated closely with misperceptions
about the war was party affiliation, with Republicans substantially
"more likely" to hold misperceptions than Democrats. But support for
Bush himself as expressed by whether or not the respondent said s/he
intended to vote for him in 2004 appeared to be an even more
critical factor.
The average frequency of misperceptions
among respondents who planned to vote for Bush was 45 percent, while
among those who plan to vote for a hypothetical Democrat candidate,
the frequency averaged only 17 percent.
Asked "Has the US
found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with
al-Qaeda"? 68 percent of Bush supporters replied affirmatively. By
contrast, two of every three Democrat-backers said no.
But
news sources also accounted for major differences in misperceptions,
according to PIPA, which asked more than 3,300 respondents since May
where they "tended to get most of [their] news''. Eighty percent
identified broadcast media, while 19 percent cited print media.
Among those who said broadcast media, 30 percent said two or
more networks; 18 percent, Fox News; 16 percent, CNN; 24 percent,
the three big networks - NBC (14 percent), ABC (11 percent), CBS (9
percent); and three percent, the two public networks, National
Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
For each of the three misperceptions, the study found
enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most
misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far.
Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least
one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All
the other media fell in between.
CBS ranked right behind Fox
with a 71 percent score, while CNN and NBC tied as the
best-performing commercial broadcast audience at 55 percent.
Forty-seven percent of print media readers held at least one
misperception.
As to the number of misconceptions held by
their audiences, Fox far outscored all of its rivals. A whopping 45
percent of its viewers believed all three misperceptions, while the
other commercial networks scored between 12 percent and 16 percent.
Only nine percent of readers believed all three, while only four
percent of the NPR/PBS audience did.
PIPA found that
political affiliation and news source also compound one another.
Thus, 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch Fox News said they
thought the United States had found evidence of a direct link to
al-Qaeda, while 50 percent of Bush supporters who rely on NPR/PBS
thought so.
Conversely, 48 percent of Fox viewers who said
they would support a Democrat believed that such evidence had been
found. But none of the Democrat-backers who relied on NPR/PBS
believed it.
The study also debunked the notion that
misperceptions were due mainly to the lack of exposure to news.
Among Bush supporters, those who said they follow the news
"very closely", were found more likely to hold misperceptions. Those
Bush supporters, on the other hand, who say they follow the news
"somewhat closely" or "not closely at all" held fewer
misperceptions.
Conversely, those Democratic supporters who
said they did not follow the news very closely were found to be
twice as likely to hold misperceptions as those who said they did,
according to PIPA.
(Inter Press Service)
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