Earlier, I wrote about how Jon Stewart can't admit that he was wrong about Fox News viewers being the most "misinformed" viewers. I did a bunch of research on one of Fox News' rivals, and applied the same standard that Jon Stewart did. Which I thought was kinda brilliant.
Shortly after that, a number of people all started using the same argument that Politifact used (a few of) the wrong studies. That there was a thin difference between being 'misinformed' and not knowing what the facts were. If one person had come to this conclusion, I'd chalk it up to one person splitting hairs. But it wasn't one person. It was a herd of Dems. So I googled, and came up with the FireDogLake post that seems to be the source of it all:
...The three Pew polls measure how informed viewers are. They don’t even belong in the discussion, because they don’t go to Stewart’s point.
Let's go back to Stewart's point:
Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll.
If we constrain our definition of "misinformed media viewers" to the FireDogLake version of what Stewart meant, then we're not talking about 'every poll'. We're talking about one polling service: PIPA. Moreover, we're talking about what PIPA asked people, and what PIPA felt was 'misinformation.' I ran into this study before, which is why I wanted to focus on it. A lot of the questions are subjective, but no question was more wrong in my opinion then this one:
When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it
NOTE: the second vote, while not initially appearing to be connected to TARP, does have TARP bootstrapped onto it. Read the text.
Now keep in mind, PIPA said that Fox viewers were 'misinformed' if they believed that most of the Republicans were against TARP. How do they form that opinion? Wait. Let's do this. Suppose you asked viewers who supported TARP more, dems or reps? What do you suppose the vast majority of MSNBC viewers would say? I'm going to jump into the pool and suggest that their 'misinformation' rating would go way, way, way up, along with those who listen to NPR.
I hate, hate, hate when people can't admit when they were wrong.
No one is more problematic at this then Jon Stewart. Granted, admitting that you're wrong isn't as funny as sticking to the premise that you're right in lieu of the fact that Politifact screwed you to the wall.
So let's start here. 3 minutes in... Stewart says:
"Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
Fox actually scored better than its two direct cable-news rivals -- MSNBC, which is a liberal counterpoint to Fox, and CNN, which is considered more middle-of-the-road. Also scoring lower than Fox were local television news, the evening network news shows and the network morning shows.
Ouch. Politifact concludes, after showing several different studies:
So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets -- such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks -- often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows -- such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show -- actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.
Of course, Jon Stewart admitted he was wrong, and moved on. Oh wait. He didn't. Ugh. Like the rest of the left, he doubled down instead of admitting that he was wrong. Stewart went on the air to say that if he was wrong, it was because he watches Fox News... whom he still claims is consistently wrong.
To keep his claim true, Stewart quotes a number of Politifacts.
Fox was never reviewed by Politifact, as a network.
They DO review individual people who have made statements on opinion programs, and then they find the statements to be true or false. In fact, if you notice, the very first quote that Stewart refers to comes from Glenn Beck. After that, he kinda doesn't mention/refer to the fact that the statements he's quoting are from opinion makers on Fox. However, Politifact does list them in one, handy, statement. What you'll notice is that Stewart is using statements from Beck, Palin, O'Reilly, and even Karl Rove as "Fox News" statements.
Now most people understand that if you list off a bunch of commentaries, you'll find people who have statements that aren't completely true. And if Stewart did that, he'd have to admit that the same thing happens on other networks.
Like... I dunno... lets do this with MSNBC.
Olbermann:
"Subsidies for oil and gas companies make up 88 percent of all federal subsidies. Just cutting the oil and gas subsidies out would save the U.S. government $45 billion every year."
Gov. Sarah Palin "got precisely zero support for her call for Alaska's Democratic Senator Mark Begich to resign because Ted Stevens' corruption conviction was overturned."
Under changes being debated, state employees in Wisconsin "who earn $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year might have 20 percent of their income just disappear overnight."
With his decision on whether to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama "has to fix yet another problem he inherited from the Bush administration."
Now I'm not even on the staff of Comedy Central writers, and I came up with that 'short' list, from just 4 people who appear on MSNBC. Should I presume that Stewart did the same thing as I did, when he researched Fox? That he took the time to compare it to other networks?
Of course he didn't. Because like many people on the left, he can't admit that his premise was wrong. He will continue to look for evidence that proves him right, ignoring anything to the contrary.
There is a thin difference between ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance is not knowing. Arrogance is the presumption that you already know.