More misinformation about the misinformed

This is an update to the recent controversy over Jon Stewart's PolitiFacted claim that polls show Fox News viewers as the most consistently misinformed group in "every poll."

In my reply to Jane Hamsher's defense of Stewart I dealt briefly with the problems inherent in the two studies produced by the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Many on the Web have started referencing a list of five polls cited by Chris Mooney purporting to demonstrate "that those who watch Fox, or watch it frequently, are more likely to be misinformed."  Two from Mooney's list are the same two PIPA surveys cited by Hamsher.  The other three share a similar set of problems.

Please note that Mooney wrote in advance of the Stewart controversy and that I take the quotation from Mooney in the preceding paragraph somewhat out of context.  Mooney is admirably cautious about drawing solid conclusions from flimsy evidence, and the quotation tends not to convey his careful approach to the issue.

Stanford University/Jon Krosnick
Krosnick's survey dealt exclusively with issues related to global climate change, and thus serves as a poor standard for judging the overall set of misinformation possessed by a group.  This is another manifestation of the selection bias problem found in both PIPA studies.  With no control on the selection of items intended to reflected general misinformation the end result will reflect selection bias.  Additionally, the study offers no method of discerning whether Fox News actively misinformed its viewers.  As Krosnick notes in his conclusion:

It is impossible to discern from these results what causal processes produced the observed relations.

Kaiser Family Foundation
The KFF study focused on a set of beliefs regarding the health care reform legislation.  Obviously, as with global climate change, misinformation about a particular health care reform bill serves as a relatively poor measure of general misinformation, political or otherwise.  In addition, a number of the truth propositions qualify as ambiguous.  For example, "Allow a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare" might serve to describe the effects of cost saving measures occurring as the result of the Independent Payment Advisory Board created under the reform legislation.

Nisbet & Garrett at Ohio State University
The Ohio State researchers examined misinformation about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," certainly another example of a narrow topic that fails to obviously serve as an indicator of political misinformation in general.  The researchers focused on a set of four "rumors" regarding the proposed mosque.


What does it all mean?

If Stewart wants to say that Fox viewers are misinformed as to some specific statement then the survey data can offer him some support, depending on the specific charge.  But none of the five surveys mentioned by Mooney serves as a good support for the type of broad claim Stewart made during his appearance on Fox News.

Hey ... maybe Stewart spoke false because he was appearing on Fox News ... ?