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April 30, 2004
Cheney Endorses Fox News

During a conference call with Republicans last night:

"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

source


Wow.

First of all, since when is it appropriate for a sitting vice-president to endorse a specific news outlet, particularly to endorse it while implying that other outlets are not effective or accurate? It's actually completely inappropriate for someone in his position to endorse any commercial enterprise at all.

Furthermore, should it be ignored that the news outlet that the vice-president cites is the one that scored the lowest in terms of viewer misperceptions in this study?

Three misperceptions were studied:

  • There is evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda
  • We have found WMD in Iraq
  • World opinion favored the U.S. invasion of Iraq

In real life, these are all demonstrably false.

80% of those whose primary source of news is Fox held 1 or more of these misperceptions. Next was CBS with 71%. ABC had 61%, NBC 45%, CNN 55%, Print Sources 47%, and finally NPR/PBS wins with only 23%.

Where do you get your news?

So, to recap, the vice-president says that Fox News is, in his experience, "more accurate." In fact, it has been shown scientifically that they are the least accurate.

Good one, Dick.

Posted by ahecht at April 30, 2004 3:39 PM
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First!

Posted by: sammie at March 31, 2005 3:20 AM