- WASHINGTON (Inter Press Service)
-- The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are
likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according
to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
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- And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News
channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about
the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program
on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
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- Based on several nationwide surveys it conducted with
California-based Knowledge Networks since June, as well as the results
of other polls, PIPA found that 48 percent of the public believe US troops
found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist
group; 22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
in Iraq; and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's
going to war with Iraq. All three are misperceptions.
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- The report, Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,
also found that the more misperceptions held by the respondent, the more
likely it was that s/he both supported the war and depended on commercial
television for news about it.
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- The study is likely to stoke a growing public and professional
debate over why mainstream news media - especially the broadcast media
- were not more skeptical about the Bush administration's pre-war claims,
particularly regarding Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles and ties with al-Qaeda.
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- "This is a dangerously revealing study," said
Marvin Kalb, a former television correspondent and a senior fellow of the
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University.
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- While Kalb said he had some reservations about the specificity
of the questions directed at the respondents, he noted that, "People
who have had a strong belief that there is an unholy alliance between politics
and the press now have more evidence." Fox, in particular, has been
accused of pursuing a chauvinistic agenda in its news coverage despite
its motto, "We report, you decide".
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- Overall, according to PIPA, 60 percent of the people
surveyed held at least one of the three misperceptions through September.
Thirty percent of respondents had none of those misperceptions.
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- Surprisingly, the percentage of people holding the misperceptions
rose slightly over the last three months. In July, for example, polls found
that 45 percent of the public believed US forces had found "clear
evidence in Iraq that Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda".
In September, 49 percent believed that.
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- Likewise, those who believed troops had found WMD in
Iraq jumped from 21 percent in July to 24 percent in September. One in
five respondents said they believed that Iraq had actually used chemical
or biological weapons during the war.
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- In determining what factors could create the misperceptions,
PIPA considered a number of variables in the data.
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- It found a high correlation between respondents with
the most misperceptions and their support for the decision to go to war.
Only 23 percent of those who held none of the three misperceptions supported
the war, while 53 percent who held one misperception did so. Of those who
believe that both WMDs and evidence of al-Qaeda ties have been found in
Iraq and that world opinion backed the United States, a whopping 86 percent
said they supported war.
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- More specifically, among those who believed that Washington
had found clear evidence of close ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda, two-thirds
held the view that going to war was the best thing to do. Only 29 percent
felt that way among those who did not believe that such evidence had been
found.
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- Another factor that correlated closely with misperceptions
about the war was party affiliation, with Republicans substantially "more
likely" to hold misperceptions than Democrats. But support for Bush
himself as expressed by whether or not the respondent said s/he intended
to vote for him in 2004 appeared to be an even more critical factor.
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- The average frequency of misperceptions among respondents
who planned to vote for Bush was 45 percent, while among those who plan
to vote for a hypothetical Democrat candidate, the frequency averaged only
17 percent.
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- Asked "Has the US found clear evidence Saddam Hussein
was working closely with al-Qaeda"? 68 percent of Bush supporters
replied affirmatively. By contrast, two of every three Democrat-backers
said no.
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- But news sources also accounted for major differences
in misperceptions, according to PIPA, which asked more than 3,300 respondents
since May where they "tended to get most of [their] news''. Eighty
percent identified broadcast media, while 19 percent cited print media.
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- Among those who said broadcast media, 30 percent said
two or more networks; 18 percent, Fox News; 16 percent, CNN; 24 percent,
the three big networks - NBC (14 percent), ABC (11 percent), CBS (9 percent);
and three percent, the two public networks, National Public Radio (NPR)
and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
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- For each of the three misperceptions, the study found
enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions,
and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far.
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- Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least
one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the
other media fell in between.
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- CBS ranked right behind Fox with a 71 percent score,
while CNN and NBC tied as the best-performing commercial broadcast audience
at 55 percent. Forty-seven percent of print media readers held at least
one misperception.
-
- As to the number of misconceptions held by their audiences,
Fox far outscored all of its rivals. A whopping 45 percent of its viewers
believed all three misperceptions, while the other commercial networks
scored between 12 percent and 16 percent. Only nine percent of readers
believed all three, while only four percent of the NPR/PBS audience did.
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- PIPA found that political affiliation and news source
also compound one another. Thus, 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch
Fox News said they thought the United States had found evidence of a direct
link to al-Qaeda, while 50 percent of Bush supporters who rely on NPR/PBS
thought so.
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- Conversely, 48 percent of Fox viewers who said they would
support a Democrat believed that such evidence had been found. But none
of the Democrat-backers who relied on NPR/PBS believed it.
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- The study also debunked the notion that misperceptions
were due mainly to the lack of exposure to news.
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- Among Bush supporters, those who said they follow the
news "very closely", were found more likely to hold misperceptions.
Those Bush supporters, on the other hand, who say they follow the news
"somewhat closely" or "not closely at all" held fewer
misperceptions.
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- Conversely, those Democratic supporters who said they
did not follow the news very closely were found to be twice as likely to
hold misperceptions as those who said they did, according to PIPA.
-
- Copyright 2003, Asia Times Online. No material from Asia
Times Online may be republished in any form without written permission.
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- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ04Ak01.html
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- http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf
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