I’m not making this shit up:
Asked to name the news source they most trusted, without any prompting, 59 percent of Egyptians said Al Jazeera, 52 percent of Brazilians said Rede Globo, 32 percent of Britons said the BBC, 22 percent of Germans said ARD and 11 percent of Americans said Fox News, each leading their respective nations.
The most trusted news brands globally were the BBC, Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster, and CNN, which is owned by the world’s biggest media conglomerate, Time Warner Inc..
The good news is that no single news outlet can garner more than 11% support from Americans. The bad news is that Fox News is the most trusted news source among Americans. This is most unfortunate. A 2003 Program on International Policy (PIPA) study found that Americans were severely misinformed about basic facts related to the war in Iraq.
An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq. Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.
But, check out the difference between people that got their news from NPR versus Fox News.
You can parse that poll anyway you want. But one thing is clear. Fox News actively misinforms its viewers. And, yet, somehow the network is more truted than any other single source of news. That is a national tragedy. We have a lot of work to do.
