Internet, Fox News Are Most Trusted News Sources

[byu71]

You can look at the questions themselves, they have a link to it in the articale.

MSNBC and Fox do equivalent jobs informing their viewers. The dummy halves (self-described liberals watching Fox News and self-described conservatives watching MSNBC) for the FOX and MSNBC samples were equally bad.

The difference in the overall scores lies in the fact that rank and file conservatives are more likely to be watching cable news than rank and file Democratic voters (bible thumping Alabama evangelical vs. Obamaphone hag -- which one do you think is more apt to sit down for a marathon session of cable news?). The ratings for Fox vs. MSNBC bears that out, Fox basically triples MSNBC's ratings. The flip side of that coin is MSNBC attracts the upper crust Democratic voters more than Fox does upper crust Republican voters -- a college professor, who on average is more of a political junkie than the population at large, vs. a self-employed business owner making over $100k a year, clearly one is more interested in watching political news than the other. MSNBC does better than Fox overall because its non-dummy half of the sample is smarter than the non-dummy half of Fox's sample. But you're comparing upper crust vs. rank and file, college professor vs. bible-thumping Alabama evangelical.

You might be right and the sample size I am thinking of is out of the norm.

What came to my mind is 6 people I know. All are multi-millionaires and great people. Four of them started their own companies and hire in each case at least 100 hundred people. They all watch Fox.

I will even grant you that perhaps the professors pay more attention, but to grant them the "smarter" distinction is a stretch.

I am reminded of the Manager I had back in the mid 80's. He was a Harvard MBA. A guy came into our office and looked disheveled (sp), grease on his clothes and a dirty baseball hat. The manager came out and basically told the guy he should dress a bit better coming into a brokerage firm and could he do anything for him. The guy said he wanted to see one of the brokers. The manager asked why and the guy said he just wanted to see him. The manager said he thought he was the brokers friend or relative or something.

I won't go on with the back and forth, but finally the guy got to see the broker and got to deposit $100,000 into his account. The guy owned a body shop and was worth a couple of million. He was the type of guy who would probably watch Fox and maybe not be able to answer Farleigh Dickinsons questions they way they think they should be answered.