Wednesday, August 07, 2013
FOX News - Fair and Balanced Misinformation 24/7 - And It Works!
You don't have to be stupid and gullible to watch FOX News but they're hoping you are. A new study finds that FOX News is an effective tool in spreading and reinforcing climate change denialism. It's remarkably similar to how FOX News audiences were so misinformed about the conquest of Iraq and the presence of (non-existent) WMDs for years after the fact.
The role of rightwing media in misleading the American people on science generally and fostering distrust of science has been documented by the journal, Public Understanding of Science.
The conclusion of the latest study is succinct: "[C]onservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening."
From Mother Jones:
The authors then proposed that distrust of scientists is a key link in the chain between watching Fox (or listening to Rush) and coming to doubt climate science. The idea is that because most people don't know a great deal about the science of global warming, they rely on "heuristics"—or mental shortcuts—to make up their minds about what to believe. "Trust" (or the lack thereof) is a classic shortcut, allowing one to quickly determine who's right and who's wrong in a seemingly complex and data-laden debate. Or as the paper put it: "The public's low level of knowledge and the media's conflicting, often value-laden messages about global warming lead people to use heuristics to make sense of this complex issue."
It seems unlikely, however, that conservative media alone can account for the distrust of science on the right. In a major 2012 study, the sociologist Gordon Gauchat showed that conservatives have lost trust in scientists across the board over a period of many decades, dating all the way back to 1974. Fox News only launched in 1996, however; Rush Limbaugh started national broadcasts in 1988.
Clearly, then, other factors must be involved in sowing distrust as well—including a long history of left-right policy fights in which scientists seemed to be on the "liberal" side, with a canonical example being the battle over Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program in the 1980s.
As a result of these conflicts, politically attuned conservatives today are well aware that scientists and academics rarely seem to come out on their side. Perhaps Fox News and the Rush Limbaugh Show are, in the end, simply the media reflection of that long-standing conservative perception.
This then seems to illustrate another example of the divide between liberalism and conservatism that reaches right into Canada also. One side is belief-driven, the other is fact-driven. One side weights science based on a willingness to trust an unwelcome messenger. The other side prefers to test the message itself and then decide.
It's hard to believe that as we near the seventh decade of the postwar era so many of us are still susceptible to this blatant manipulation, so willing to rely on raw belief over demonstrated fact. Yet the majority government that rules our country is more than ample proof that belief trumps reality in Canada.
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7 comments:
Mound, you say: "The other side prefers to test the message itself and then decide."
Unfortunately that "other side" is a small fraction of the population.
I think you're misconstruing MoS there. I believe what he means by "test the message itself and then decide" is that right-wingers look at what's being said, and if it fits their preferences, prejudices, ideology, convenience they will decide the messenger is trustworthy, whereas if the message is inconvenient or conflicts with their beliefs or emotional needs, they will conclude the messenger is untrustworthy and discount it (even if there are strong independent reasons to consider the messenger reliable).
I would argue that both the authors of the study, and the writers at Mother Jones, have overlooked another important factor. Evangelical Christians make up a large chunk of the Republican base, and evangelical Christians are also overwhelmingly believers in Creationism.
It may not seem important for people who sweep floors for a living to accept the theory of evolution, but evangelical Christians attack a broad range of science in order to promote Creationism, and even resort to sowing doubts about science in general, and distrust of scientists themselves.
The Mother Jones article also mentions that conservative distrust of science goes back at least as far as 1974. The late 60s and early 70s was when evangelical Christians in the US got serious about organizing politically, and when these groups in particular began openly aligning themselves with the Republican party.
I think that the point about people taking shortcuts in their thinking (heuristics) is very interesting, Mound. The fact of the matter is that real thinking can be quite laborious and time-consuming and has the potential to interfere with the things we are encouraged to pursue in our often shallow and materialistic society: purchasing that the next new technological toy, watching 'reality' tv, buying the latest fashion, watching more 'reality' tv, etc. ad nauseam. 'reality' tv,
Yes, the liberal side tends to rely on critical thinking whereas the conservative side tends to prefer to rely on values and belief. One side scrutinizes the message. The other is often content to simply look at the messenger.
Mark, you're quite right. This is explored in detail in Kevin Phillip's "American Theocracy." The author, a once prominent Republican, details how evangelism in service of conservatism resulted in something of a theocratic U.S. state. This is further considered by Andrew Bacevich in "The New American Militarism" in which the retired U.S. Army commander turned professor, traces how Christian fundamentalists threw in with neo-conservatives and, in turn, were incorporated into the military-industrial complex. It was a very sophisticated merger.
You're right, Lorne. There is a significant and apparently growing segment of the population that simply does not want to know. These people find simplicity and the appearance of certainty from outlets like FOX News or open mouth radio.
As to the general notion of using heuristics, I can actually sympathize. I'm convinced I'm a genius, but even I know I can't be an expert at everything. So I have certain shortcuts I apply when subjects or controversies come up that I'm not familiar with. Some of these do indeed have to do with who I consider to be reliable sources and who I don't.
In my case, though, my "which messenger to shoot" heuristics are usually filtered through a prior one: Follow the money. Who has a financial interest in the message they're pushing?
Generally this means I'll end up trusting scruffy activist loonies or community groups before I trust respectable suited establishment figures. But a lot of people seem to start from a status filter--they'll trust an authority figure first even if they obviously have money to make from lying. I've never understood that. Or rather, I guess I understand it, it hard wires into people's internal dominance hierarchy stuff, but it makes no rational sense.
Right wingers use the dominance hierarchy thing to get people to believe well-groomed well-dressed prosperous intellectually bankrupt people who tell them not to trust scruffy scientists just because they're intelligent, study the issue for a living, and have nothing to gain and much to lose from falsifying results. And it works because at that ape level, many people are insane by a "how best to arrive at the truth" yardstick. Sigh.
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