Media Spin and Misperception

Compiled by David Pakman

          With the recent errant news stories reported by the media, as well as the massive inflow of "commentators," "analysts," and, for all intents and purposes, "spinners," accusations have started to circulate regarding which media outlet provides the least biased information, and whether or not certain outlets have a liberal or conservative leaning. The original report in which this information was published contains much information about various topics, but here we will look at specifically the issues of media coverage.

          Before we get started, there are three misconceptions which we will refer to. These three misconceptions are:

1. WMD have been found in Iraq.

2. A collaborative connection has been established between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks conducted by Al-Qaeda.

3. That there is overall support for the Iraq war by other countries.

          These premises themselves may be points of disagreement, as our feature on the different worlds that Bush and Kerry supporters live in tells us. However, by all reasonable standards, the three stipulations listed above are false.

          First, let's look at how likely people are to have supported the war on Iraq compared to the number of misperceptions they held true:

          As we can see, and it should be no surprise to anyone, the more misperceptions people believed to be true, the more likely they were to have supported the war. I'm sure you can read the chart, so I won't repeat it here. What's interesting to me is that 23% of people that held no misperceptions still favored the war, and even more interestingly, 14% of those who held all three misperceptions still did not favor the war. An interesting question would be why do those who believed all three still oppose the war, and why do those who know the reality of these misperceptions still favor it?

          While this correlation between misperceptions and favoring the war should be no surprise, what may be a surprise is which news outlet's viewers are most likely to hold these misperceptions:

          The chart at the right indicates misperceptions based on which outlet was reported as the respondents primary news source. Based on the data, it's clear the Fox news, with CBS close behind it, had the highest portion of viewers who held at least one of the there misperceptions. On the other hand, the media outlet whose viewers seemed to have the most accurate view of reality is PBS/NPR, along with print media, which are the only two which had less than half of its consumers holding at least one misperception.

          Not shown graphically, but included in the study, is the fact that the people who held all three misperceptions were three times as likely to be primarily Fox News viewers as the second media outlet on the list.

          The table to the left indicates the average rate of all three misperceptions. Again, Fox News is at the top of the list, with PBS/NPR at the bottom.

          Now let's take a quick look at each of the three misperceptions by media outlet:

Regarding the misperception of the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, Fox News again was at the top of the list. Just over two-thirds of Fox viewers held this misperception, four times the16% of PBS/NPR's audience did soFox and CBS were the only two which had more than half of its audience subscribing to the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection.

          Next up is the issue of weapons of mass destruction:

          Concerning weapons of mass destruction, while Fox News is still at the top of the list, none of the media outlets had more than one-third of its viewers believing that WMD had been found. Furthermore, the difference between the highest and lowest figures, that being Fox at 33%, and PBS/NPR at 11%, is only three times, compared to more than four times regarding the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection.

          The third and final misperception is, of course, that of the world's lack of favorability towards the Iraq war:

          The numbers are once again similar, with Fox News first, and CBS second. What is interesting about this third misperception is that only 5%, or one out of every 20 PBS/NPR consumers  incorrectly believed that there was any significant level of support for the war by the world outside of the United States. It might be interesting to see why PBS/NPR consumers correctly understood this issue by a significant margin compared to the other two.

          Some might ask, what does this matter? Why is it important that consumers of a particular media outlet have a higher rate of misperceptions regarding these three important issues?

          The reason is, that these misperceptions have a significant effect on who people vote for, as the chart to the left clearly indicates.

          Finally, the most interesting thing about these findings is not which media outlet's viewers hold the most misperceptions, but how it has affected those viewers in exactly the opposite way:

          By and large, this is simply astounding. As you can see from the chart to the right:

--Among Bush supporters, the more they are exposed to news, the more likely they are to hold these three misconceptions as true.

--Among Democratic nominee supporters, the more they are exposed to news, the less likely they are to hold true these misconceptions.

          Please send any questions, comments, or hate mail to me here.

More Media Links:

• History of the Media

Source: PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll: Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.