The purpose of rightwing attacks on public broadcasting is obvious: it’s to expand their control of media as a propaganda tool, in order to spread right-wing lies.
This is not mere rhetoric, as can be seen by the results of polling done by the Project on International Policy Alternatives (PIPA), which clearly shows that (1) support for the Iraq war was strongly correlated with belief in thee pro-war lies (propaganda) and (2) belief in the pro-war lies (propaganda) was strongly correlated with the source of news. PIPA’s study genteely called the lies “misperceptions,” but spreading lies is clearly what this is all about. The full report can be found here (pdf)
[Gory details on the flip]
Among other things, PIPA found that:
That’s a very impressive level of belief in an outright falsehood. The two other lies were:
(2) The US has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
(3) Majority world opinion favors US going to war.
While support for the war was correlated with each of the lies, the combined effect was more powerful than that of any one lie alone:
Number of Percent Support
misperceptions for War
None 23
One 53
Two 78
Three 86
Now, correlation is not causation. People don’t necessarily support the war because they believe certain lies. It can work the other way around, too: because they support the war, they believe certain lies. But either way, spreading lies helped to build and maintain support for the war. Those who did not believe these three lies opposed the war by an enormous margin.
In turn, belief in the pro-war lies was strongly correlated with the source of news:
News % with
Media One None
Source or More of 3
Misperceptions
NPR/PBS 23 77
Print 47 53
NBC 55 45
CNN 55 45
ABC 61 39
CBS 71 30
Fox 80 20
In short, the NPR/PBS audience member was nearly four times as likely as the Fox viewer to believe none of the three lies. That’s precisely what the GOP wants to fix, much the same way you’d fix a race…or an election.
PIPA went on to note that news source was a powerful influence, even beyond political orientation. For example, among those who supported Bush 78% of Fox watchers believed that evidence of links to al Qaeda had been found, compared to jut 50% of Bush supporters who watched PBS. Even more dramatic was the difference among supporters of a generic Democratic opponents (the primaries were still months away at the time): Among Democratic supporters who watched Fox, 48% believed this lie, compared to 0% of those watching or listening to PBS/NPR. In other words, Democratic supporters watching Fox were as prone to swallowing propaganda as Republicans who watched PBS or listened to NPR. Taking all three lies into account, Democratic supporters watching/listening to PBS/NPR were virtually the only group that was almost completely untouched by pro-war lies.
So, the conclusion is clear and unambiguous: The rightwing attempt to make PBS and NPR more “fair and balanced” is, objectively, an attempt to eliminate the least biased form of corporate media, and turn it into a more effective channel for spreading GOP lies. You can spin it any way you want. But that’s what it is.
Case closed.