Pulitzer prize-level reporting here

This post was edited by excellence on Aug 28 2020 01:14pm

In the study, 1,185 respondents nationwide were asked about what news sources theyconsumedin the past week and then were asked a variety ofquestions about current political and economic eventsin the U.S. and abroad. On average, people were able to answer correctly 1.8 of4 questions about international news, and 1.6 of5 questions about domestic affairs.“Of course, knowledge of current events is predicted not just by watching news, but also by factors like ideology, education, age and gender,” said Dan Cassino, political scientist and poll analyst. “Based on these results, people who don’t watch any news at all are expected to answer correctly on average 1.22 of the questions about domestic politics, just by guessing or relying on existing basic knowledge.”However, the study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News wouldbe expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly—a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all.On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR,they wouldbe expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching onlyThe Daily Show with Jon Stewartcouldanswer about 1.42questions correctly

-tl;dr- People who get their information from Fox do worse at answering simple questions on domestic political news than people who don't watch media at all.

This post was edited by balrog66 on Aug 28 2020 01:17pm

What's interesting is that Talk Radio performs so well. It would be beneficial to actually see the questions they're asking.

The questions can be found in the link I posted. I'll copy paste them here for convenience. Not all the questions are multiple choice, read too quick.



This post was edited by balrog66 on Aug 28 2020 01:31pm

Was this 2012? Based on memory I'm gonna go with:

1. Yes
2. No
3. Germany
4. Stop from enriching uranium/building a nuclear weapon
5. GOP
6a. Honestly I have no idea. I want to say raise the debt ceiling but it could be any number of things.
6b. Santorum
7. Romney
8. ~7.5%

Yes, it was 2012. You only got 6a wrong, which was about the Keystone XL Pipeline. Unemployment was apparently around 8%. Well done, all in all.

I would assume that those choosing to listen to talk radio, as opposed to plain music, are more politically interested and engaged, while Fox News is watched by a cross-section of all conservatives, even the relatively apolitical ones.

yeah talk radio you kind of have to go out of your way to listen imo, faux can be put on anywhere

there are some really smart talk radio hosts (although most would call them reich-wingers). Mark Levin comes to mind

Streaming didn't get big last year. Streaming is a trend that we've had for what close to 10 years now?

Also seems like fox sports has fared okay when it comes to cord-cutting from 13-17 while ESPN has seen declines. Does cord cutting not apply to Fox or?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2018/01/10/as-espn-and-nbcsn-see-drops-fs1-sees-modest-total-viewership-growth/#1707f400681b