Studies Consistently Show That People Who Watch FOX News Are Less Intelligent
We are not sure yet whether people become less intelligent as a result of watching FOX News, or if FOX News just attracts people who are already less intelligent. Either way it is definitely an embarrassing mark for FOX and for America … since FOX News is America’s most watch news channel.
According to numerous unbiased studies into public awareness, FOX viewers consistently score the worst … with viewers of MSNBC scoring second worst, but considerably better than FOX viewers. Both FOX and MSNBC viewers score lower than people who watch no news at all.
Among people who get their news from TV and radio, the best grades, by a large margin, go to those who listen to NPR.
FOX viewers will dispute these findings … probably claiming they were compiled by “liberal” sources. That is to be expected. But I, personally, believe these scores reveal a truth concerning the direction America is headed.
Less intelligent, less thoughtful people are more easily herded this way or that by scare tactics and visual stimulation like TV ads. In recent decades, TV news programs have increasingly taken on the look of ads and campaigns, using propaganda and sound bites to herd their listeners toward a predetermined agenda. These tactics work best with the less intelligent crowd.
The fact is, none of the major TV and radio news programs are interested in publishing truth. To the contrary, they are there to do the bidding of their owners … and their owners are government-sanctioned corporations that use their news outlets to program the American public to get on board their political and corporate agenda.
I might add that the best informed and most intelligent people are those who don’t tune into TV or radio at all. Rather, they scan the internet for independent news reporting, and they research information from other countries as well. The well-informed are always those few who don’t accept propaganda, but instead use their own research and analytic skills to find truth.
Intelligent people know that the folks who own the TV and radio news programs have their own agendas and cannot be trusted.
Hopefully the following articles will give pause to those who watch TV news (especially FOX News), and encourage those who have already given it up.
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Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average.
The Intelligence Institute
Study shows that the Americans who watch Fox News have an average IQ of 80, whereas the national average is 100. Researchers were not “shocked” by findings.
Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB) December 04, 2012
The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.
Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.
Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers.
Lead researcher, P. Nichols, explains, “Less intelligent animals rely on instinct when confronted by something which they do not understand. This is an ancient survival reaction all animals, including humans, exhibit. It’s a very simple phenomenon, really; think about a dog being afraid of a vacuum cleaner. He doesn’t know what a vacuum is or if it may harm him, so he becomes agitated and barks at it. Less intelligent humans do the same thing. Concepts that are too complex for them to understand may frighten or anger them.”
He continues, “Fox News’ content is presented at an elementary school level and plays directly into the fears of the less educated and less intelligent.”
The researchers said that an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone’s ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives.
The study did not conclude if Fox News contributed to lowering IQ or if it attracts less intelligent humans.
P. Nichols concludes that he wasn’t shocked by the studies’ results, rather how dramatic their range. “Several previous studies show that self-identified conservatives are less intelligent than self-identified moderates. We have never seen such a homogeneous group teetering so close to special needs levels.”
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Study Finds Fox News Viewers Least Informed Of All Viewers
Posted: 05/23/2012 8:32 am Updated: 05/24/2012 11:23 am
Another study has concluded that people who only watch Fox News are less informed than all other news consumers.
Researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University updated a study they had conducted in late 2011. That study only sampled respondents from New Jersey, where the university is located. This time, the researchers conducted a nationwide poll.
The poll asked questions about international news (Iran, Egypt, Syria and Greece were included) and domestic affairs (Republican primaries, Congress, unemployment and the Keystone XL pipeline.)
The pollsters found that people were usually able to answer 1.8 out of 4 questions on foreign news, and 1.6 of 5 questions on domestic news, and that people who don’t watch any news were able to get 1.22 of the questions on domestic policy right.
As the study explained, though, people who watched only Fox News fared worse:
The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be 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 would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching only “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” could answer about 1.42 questions correctly.
Other networks also did badly in some sections; MSNBC viewers and Fox News viewers both fared worse in answering international questions than people who watched no news.
People who only listened to NPR or watched Sunday morning talk shows or “The Daily Show” did the best in the study.
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s – PublicMind Poll
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Another study says watching Fox News makes you dumber
I’ve lost count of how many of these studies have been done at this point, but I guess it’s time to add another one to the pile. Watching Fox News makes you less informed about events than not watching any news at all.
According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.Respondents to the survey were able to answer correctly an average of 1.8 of 4 questions about international news and 1.6 out of 5 questions about domestic affairs. “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,” said Dan Cassino, the poll’s analyst.
“The study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly,” wrote Cassino and his colleagues. “The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be 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 would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly.”
Now, let’s just reflect on this. Let’s say you decided to make a little fort out of your couch cushions, crawl inside, and just stay there. No television, no newspapers, no contact with the outside world whatsoever. Let’s say you only ventured out to hunt your own food in the backyard, so that your meals consisted mainly of crabgrass and possums. Let’s say that, for companionship, you made a little stick figure out of paper clips, named him, oh, I don’t know, let’s say “Skippy,” and devoted yourself to long, meandering conversations with him about nothing in particular. Then you got mad at him and broke his little paper clip leg, panicked and buried him in the yard.
You’d still know more about the world than if you watched Fox News.
On Monday, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes was giving one of his patented “I iz so smart, Fox iz so great” college lectures. This one was filled with gems like “one thing that qualifies me to run a journalism organization is the fact that I don’t have a journalism degree” and that reporters for the New York Times were “a bunch of lying scum.”
You would think that having studies show that your “news network” actively causes viewers to know less about the news than when they started would put a bit of a damper on your ol’ public displays of self-aggrandizement. Then again, if you’re the head of Fox News, you probably just say those studies are figments of the imagination, or were commissioned by dirty rotten hippies, and get on with your day. Or maybe you just have Steve Doocy say that stuff, because you can’t be bothered and because Steve Doocy will say anything you put in front of him.
So given that public shaming is right out—I’m sure Roger would be first to tell you that the purpose of the news is not to inform people, after all—what’s left? Maybe a truth in advertising law, so that if your viewers score abominably in tests of basic world events, you’re no longer allowed to call yourself “news”? Federal marshals come to paint over the “News” part of all your signs?
At the least, I might politely assert here that if your “news” programs result in people not knowing the news, or believing false things about the news, it’s not “news” anymore. It’s propaganda. You can puff out your chest and talk about your patriotism and great business sense all you want, but the rest of us don’t have to actually respect you for it. You’re still just a huckster in a nice suit.
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