Talk:Fox News Channel/Archive 8

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
← Archive 7 |
Archive 8
| Archive 9 →

Contents

Since crazieeddie has taken himself out of the negotiations

Since crazieddie has taken himself out of the negotiations due to my continued participation, I have removed the version that noone favors, and put in the version that at least one of us favors (yours truly), and I have put it in a new "Fox viewers", section. I could not put it in the allegations of bias section without compromising my scientific integrity, however if someone elses feels they can do so without qualms I will support the compromise of including it in there. The reason I have been only deleting it previously, was because it was I could not in good faith put my compromise in that section, since I think scientifically, this study is unrelated to biased news coverage. I am not taking the position that Fox news is unbiased, just that this study did not study Fox news coverage, biased or not.--Silverback 08:08, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Silverback, I prefer your version to the one that it replaced, but I'm not sure whether I understand your thinking.
The study found that FNC (and affiliates, which News Corporation endorses?) had a greater proportion of its audience than its competitors had holding some views. That much is falsifiable and, as such, scientific. There isn't only one explanation for this. Is your concern that the study couldn't have falsified FNC bias as a cause? Of other possible explanations, do any merit mentioning the study here? I think that the widespread belief that it is plausable that FNC coverage caused these views is what makes the study worthy of inclusion, even if the views aren't misperceptions and the FNC is not responsible. I wouldn't call it bias (there's nothing interesting about news being biased), but misleading. I would like the allegations of bias section to be renamed, but don't think that there is much support for that. I would like the PIPA report to be joined with the other "allegations of bias" again. Perhaps we should say that there is some disagreement about whether FNC was a cause of these views.
I have linked to PSQ and removed (PIPA) from the version in the article, because the abbreviation doesn't appear elsewhere in the article. I have shortened the bit about Iraq's direct involvement in the attack. I have replaced "all over the world" with "in the world", because, apart from sounding nicer to me, it is the original wording. I have changed "published a report ... , that" to "reported, ... , that".
Tim Ivorson 16:42, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanx for your improvements. The data PIPA collected could not distinguish between Fox News and the local Fox affiliates, and within the affiliates, it could not distinguish between the local news programs and the national news programs.
Not only could the study not falsify FNC bias as a cause, it wasn't looking at causes, but it did try to explain the results with correlations, and the strongest predictor of holding these "misperceptions" was not the news source, it was whether the viewers supported president Bush or not, so the strongest predictor was the "bias" of the viewers and this held across all the media sources. I think the news source came after that, and then some other bias or characteristic of the viewers, I forget which, but it is discussed in the report. Of course, there may be important variables which were not even measured. The reason, I wanted separate percentages reported for each misperception is because if this is listed in an allegations of bias section without them, most readers would assume that since it is presumably a section on biased coverage, viewers would believe the coverage of the network they prefer and thus the readers would assume a majority would hold the misperception. The figures make it clear that for two of the "misperceptions" at least it is well less than a majority who hold them. The difficulty for those who claim that these misperceptions are due to biased news coverage, beyond the problem of the pre-existing bias of the viewers, is that somehow despite the biased coverage, a majority of the viewers managed to get the "right" perceptions.
PIPAs main conclusion about blame for the misperceptions, was that the cause was probably the statements of Bush and other administration officials, across the media sources, and the solution was for the media to be better at independent fact checking and holding officials accountable. --Silverback 18:02, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Resolving the difficulty for people who believe that FNC (intentionally or unintentionally) mislead its viewers: I think that each viewer is swayed not only by their primary news source, but also by a unique combination of other factors (such as secondary news sources, regional, statistical, media, etc. expertise, whether the viewer pays close attention, etc.). Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have not removed myself from the negotiations. Tim, what are our options here? I'm tired of Silverback's unilateral editing, and I'm tired of his failure to compromise. I can work with somebody who holds Silverback's views, but not with someone with his attitude.

To Silverback's objections to this bulletpoint:

  • It doesn't really matter, technically, if the report tends to prove or disprove bias at Fox. It only matters if critics of Fox believe it does. We are not here to prove or disprove Fox's alledged bias, we are only here to show what both sides put forward as evidence. If the critics of Fox believe this report tends to show bias at Fox (which they clearly do), then we need to say why they believe this, and give the defenders of Fox a chance to respond. I'm afraid that is going to require some interpertation (which we were hoping to avoid), but I'd rather it didn't require counterpoints. Maybe an "interpertation" paragraph at the end?
  • We have spelled out that the report did not distinquish between FNC and local affilate broadcasts. However, I'm not sure how much difference that would make. Surely local affilates pool their national and international reporting? Surely there is overlap between the affilate national and international reporting and FNC coverage? Furthermore, either a much greater proportion of local affilate viewers would have to hold the given views or local affilate viewers would have to have had greater representation in the study than FNC viewers in order to make much difference. We have already made note of the lack of distincition, but if you wish to propose a way to make it even more clear, feel free.
I was completely in the dark about what affiliate stations were until I read this (from a link in the article [1]):
FOX affiliates are run independently and overseen by FOX Television Stations Inc. FOX affiliates are separate entities from FOX News Channel. FOX News has no editorial oversight of any FOX affiliate.
It is, of course, a Fair and Balanced account of FNC's relation to its affiliates. Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • <<strongest predictor of holding these "misperceptions" ... was whether the viewers supported president Bush or not>> Correlation is not causation, but correlation does imply a casual relationship. A causes B, or B causes A, or C causes both A and B. In this case, I'd say it was a matter of B causing A - holding these views tends to cause one to support Bush. Supporting Buch does not neccessarily cause one to hold these views. Something similar could be said for the correlation between views held and primary newsource - a person holding a view is more likely to watch a certain newsource, not that watching a newsource causes one to hold a certain view. I personally believe that the reverse is true, but I freely admit that this is a possiblity - and so should the bulletpoint.
I very much agree with this. Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • <<The figures make it clear that for two of the "misperceptions" at least it is well less than a majority who hold them. >> I was originally fully in favor of including percentages for all the views, but it was decided that if percentages for Fox were given, then percentages for all the newsources must be given for comparision. Because of this, I suggested giving only the percentages for the "overall score", solely as a way to save space. I'm am fully willing to include all the percentages - provided that the consensus view agrees that it is worth the space.
As a Fox critic, I am not trying to show that a majority of Fox viewers hold misperceptions, I am only trying to show that a gradient of views exists between users of different news sources and that Fox is at one end of the spectrum. With those sole exception of one data point, where Fox came in second to CBS, this is shown in all of the percentages. I have no objection to including that data point - I just didn't think of it until Silverback brought it up. I am only objecting to the inclusion of all the percentages for reasons of space. I agree that the gradient does not prove that Fox is biased, but it does suggest it. If necessary, we should spell that out in a final "interpertation" paragraph.
Which percentages are included isn't important to me, but I don't think that it is necessary to include percentages at all. The most important fact is that the proportion was highest for FNC. We need to be concise because not doing so means taking reader's attention away from no less important issues and making the article vulnerable to POV. For this reason, I also think that we shouldn't say that PIPA labelled the beliefs misperceptions. I would like to apend to the PIPA bullet something like this: "There is some disagreement over whether FOX News coverage was misleading and whether this explains its viewers' beliefs." Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • <<PIPAs main conclusion about blame for the misperceptions, was that the cause was probably the statements of Bush and other administration officials, across the media sources, and the solution was for the media to be better at independent fact checking and holding officials accountable.>> If this conclusion is true (which I believe it to be), it still doesn't explain why Fox was so much worse at "independent fact checking and holding officials accountable" than other news sources. I believe that it is because Fox is biased towards the Bush administration, and that it would engage in a lot more "independent fact checking and holding officials accountable" if a Democratic administration were involved. The subject of this section is not whether Fox has failed in its journalistic mission (which some Fox critics do believe, but this is an extreme view), but only if Fox is biased. It is possible to be biased while keeping your journalistic intergrity intact. I believe that the study, at the very least, is contributing evidence of Fox's bias. It claims to be evidence of the failure of American media in general, with Fox as the worst offender, but that claim is outside the scope of this section.
Quite, but at least it's different from the other biased news channels. The pro (Republican and Democrat) establishment media is a bigger threat than the clearly partisan FNC. Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

We seem to be getting further from, not closer to, a compromise, and I believe this to be because of Silverback's refusal to compromise. I am fully willing to compromise, and, in fact, have leaned over backwards to do so, and have done my best to suggest compromise solutions that take Silverback's objections into account. He hasn't done the same, and I'm sick and tired of doing his job as well as mine. Unless there is strong consensus against it, I would like to request mediation, with the goal of encouraging Silverback to compromise or else remove him from the discussion so we can do our job. Either that, or determining if I'm out of line, in which case, I'll try to improve myself. I am not removing myself from this negotiation! crazyeddie 19:34, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that there is any disagreement over anything important any more. I can't see why we aren't ready to finish this discussion. I like the two recent versions that I have looked at (but it should be put back in the Allegations of bias section). (If I recall correctly) Silverback made controversial changes with reason, but without discussing it first. That behaviour would have been perfectly acceptable in some articles. I think that you're being uncharitable. Tim Ivorson 19:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, only noticied this after I wrote that: "The version I removed was one none of us favors, why are you reverting back to it when you don't favor it?"

Until we can work out a compromise bulletpoint, we should keep the previous version. Removing the previous version (which was at least "good enough") while we are still working on the new compromise version is disrespectful. At most, we should make note that we are working on an new version, and invite readers to help out. I believe that there is strong consensus for keeping this bulletpoint, at least in some version, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Who is in favor of keeping some form of this bulletpoint? Who is against?

I'm, of course, for keeping it. crazyeddie 19:46, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was involved in a dispute on the George W. Bush article, where this concept came into play. The solutions we tried:
  1. The precedent/status quo should be mantained until a new consensus is reached. That precedent/status quo must meet certain criteria:
    • It is a version that chronologically precedes the dispute.
    • It had either de jure (explicit) consensus, or de facto (it remained without dispute or significant changes for a reasonably long period of time, such that anyone who had a problem with it had time to make changes or make their dispute known. In that no significant changes were made or dispute made known, it is implied that there was no dispute; it was accepted by not being not accepted.)
  2. A "stopgap" is agreed to take its place by vote. Multiple versions are suggested and voted on. This is a temporary measure, as wikipedia is not a democracy. No significant changes are made to the stopgap until there is reasonable consensus on the talk page.

However, I must add that the circumstances were unusual, in that it involved a problem user, who had a penchant for reverting ad absurdum, and eventually led to arbitration. The "stopgap" was implemented as an attempt to stop the endless reverts and page protections, without conceding to brute force tactics. I doubt that this is the circumstance here. In any case, when someone posses a question, as crazzyeddie just did, they usually really want the answers; they are usually not being rhetorical, though from my experience they seem to all too often be interpreted as such, and this tends to be an obstacle to productive discussion. Kevin Baastalk 20:07, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

I am most certainly not being rhetorical. I understood that there was consensus for keeping this bulletpoint. Based on this, I am assuming that the purpose of this discussion is to work out a new compromise version to replace the existing version. (This existing version is a compromise worked out by Trodel, Tim Ivorson and myself. It has been in place for some time. Several months I think?) Silverback has twice removed the bulletpoint, while this discussion was going on, without consulting anybody. I believe these actions gives me a right to be a little bit hot under the collar. If I am wrong, and there is a consensus that the bulletpoint should be removed, then I will most humbly apologize. Silverback has "proposed" removing the bulletpoint. I would like to have a formal vote on this issue, with the stipulation that double jeopardy applies. Not permamently, I'd just like the issued settled for, say, the next three months.

Assuming that it is the consensus that some form of this bulletpoint is to be kept, then the next step is to work out a new compromise. Silverback did propose alternate versions, but these versions contravened certain principles that I believe to have been laid out by the consensus. If it is the consensus that this bulletpoint be kept in some form, and that the present form be replaced by a fresh compromise version, and if Silverback is willing to work with us to create this compromise version, then I would like to have a formal vote on those principles as well.

If Silverback agrees to work within those principles, then I am willing to work with him. crazyeddie 19:16, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The pre-existing version had been in place since early February and stood for nearly a month and a half, and I don't recall you being involved in creating it. --Silverback 21:23, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

For the record, check the Talk:FOX News/Allegations of Bias archive. Trodel did the heavy lifting, so I don't show up in the actual article's page history for that period. But I was involved, along with Trodel and Tim Ivorson, in the negotiation that produced this version:

  • A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes reports that, even after adjusting for viewership and political preference, viewers of FOX News were more likely than the viewers of any other network to hold three beliefs, which it labels "misperceptions" [2] (PDF):
    • That evidence of a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been found;
    • That weapons of mass destruction had been discovered in Iraq; and
    • That the U.S. had received wide international support in its decision to go to war.

The purpose of that rewrite was to shorten the entire Allegations of Bias section to managable length. From the talk archive, it looks like it went into effect late in January. crazyeddie 07:55, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it still doesn't explain why Fox was so much worse at "independent fact checking and holding officials accountable" than other news sources

Crazyeddie, Fox wasn't so much worse. Fox just had more Bush supporters among its viewers. Read the report. And note that they make a point that it was "Bush supporters", not "republicans", because bush support was a predictor even among democrats and was more important than party affiliation.

The purpose of the entry we are discussing is about a NPOV and fair representation of the scientific points of the report as they relate to Fox, and to this article which is about Fox News. This approach of yours is misguided, I quote: "If the critics of Fox believe this report tends to show bias at Fox (which they clearly do), then we need to say why they believe this, and give the defenders of Fox a chance to respond." Just because the critics use this report is no reason to misrepresent the evidence it provides. If you want to explain why critics believe things about this report, you are welcome to include quotes from those critics, but we should not distort the report to support their views. It doesn't even have to be quotes, if you think you can fairly summarize and document their views. I have not opposed opinions in the article that are critical of Fox, or even those that misrepresent this report if they are significant opinions. But it is not up to us to misrepresent the report.--Silverback 20:22, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What about the following from the report, which contradicts your position:

For purposes of my response, let me call this quote 1--Silverback 10:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Of course, the presence or absence of misperceptions in viewers does not necessarily prove that they were caused by the presence or absence of reliable reporting by a news source. Variations in the level of misperceptions according to news source may be related to variations in the political orientations of the audience. However, when political attitudes were controlled for the variations between the networks and the same attitudes still obtained, it suggests that differences in reporting by media sources were playing a role. (Page 25)
The report also cites that 4 main factors were responsible for the level of misperceptions: intention to vote for Bush, being a FOX viewer, intention to vote for Democratic nominee, and level of education. Among these, the intention to vote Bush was the greatest factor involved in likelihood of misperception (being a FOX viewer is the 2nd most important factor). However, I stress that this is clearly irrelevant to FOX simply because the PIPA study as we have quoted it here focuses on specific findings of misperception among news networks viewers. The PIPA study, on the other hand, did not focus on such a specific aspect of it but dealt with the general level of misperception of all Americans. Which is why I believe you were deliberately being disingenuous when you said that "FOX had more Bush supporters". That is irrelevant because if we exclude the part of the report which deals generally with misperceptions in the American people, which we should because we are interested only in the data on the news networks, FOX becomes the most important factor in determining likelihood of misperception. I quote:

Call this quote 2--Silverback 10:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Fox is the most consistently significant predictor of misperceptions. Those who primarily watched Fox were 2.0 times more likely to believe that close links to al Qaeda have been found, 1.6 times more likely to believe that WMD had been found, 1.7 times more likely to believe that world public opinion was favorable to the war, and 2.1 times more likely to have at least one misperception. Interestingly, when asked how the majority of people in the world feel about the war, if the response “views are evenly balanced” is included as a misperception along with “favor,” only Fox is a significant predictor of that misperception. (Page 22)

Also omitted by you is the following:

Call this quote 3 --Silverback 10:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Level of attention to news was not a significant factor overall, with the exception of those who primarily got their news from Fox. This is consistent with the finding that Fox viewers were more likely to misperceive the more closely they followed events in Iraq. Multiplicative variables were derived for each network by multiplying attention to news by each network dummy variable. A multivariate analysis was performed on misperceptions in which each new combined network-attention level variable was added to the previous model. The results show that Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news. (Page 23)

Call this comment 1 --Silverback 10:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How does this support your contention that it was the viewers's political affilations which mainly contributed to the results? Furthermore, if you're talking about a fair representation, I insist that all percentages for the rest of the networks be inserted if percentages of FOX viewers holding misperceptions are to be represented.
I apologise for quoting large chunks of text from the report, but I believed it was necessary because of Silverback's tendency to omit findings detrimental to his political perspective. I believe I have patched up some of the missing pieces of the report Silverback deliberately overlooked (which he is fond of doing). I encourage ALL USERS who have an interest in seeing the PIPA report adequately represented to download and view the PDF file included within instead of reading selective quotations by Silverback. Tim Ivorson, if you are interested in understanding the real picture presented by the report, the best thing for you to do is to read the report directly and not depend on Silverback's selective quotes. If any of you thinks Acrobat Reader loads far too slowly to be a good reader I know of a technical solution which would speed up Acrobat Reader loading much quicker.
PS. Silverback, please include the page number of the report when you quote from the report so readers would not have the problem of having to search through the entire report. Ethereal 03:09, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
Welcome to the extremely exclusive club of those who have actually read the report. I can't believe I am being criticised for how much of the report I left out. Until your cogent post here, I had left out less of the report than any other contributer. Your point about page numbers is well taken. From your usage, it looks like you are using the acrobat page numbers and not the page numbers of the actual document itself, so I will follow that precedent. I am curious about your technique for faster loading. I assume that you save the document to disk and then open it? If not, please share your insight.
First, let me make a general comment, most uses of variations of the word "significant" used in the paper do not refer to the opinion or value judgement, but to statistical signifcance. In some cases it is quite clear the authors intended the statistical term, but sometimes their language does not appear to have been careful. This is important, because while the emphasis in the text may sometimes seem to be related to the strength of signal in the data, the size of the sample is also playing a factor. On page 14, please find this quote: "Fox, 520; CBS, 258; CNN, 466; ABC, 315; NBC, 420; NPR/PBS, 91." Note that the Fox figure is larger, so it is easier to achieve statistical significance. Furthermore, this study is an attempt to combine surveys taken at different times with different questions under different conditions. Because of this most issues have even smaller perhaps more disparate sample sizes. On page 22 in table 9 column "N" the only the sample sizes for Fox, CBS and PBS/NPR are reported. For our questions 2, 1 and 3 they are: 361 182 53, 366 188 59, and 294 168 55 respectively. Once again, in this selective subset of figures that the authors reported,the Fox figures are smaller than before, but larger than the others and therefore have a greater chance of achieving significance in any analysis.
I'd like to address your second quote next, in fact, page 22 is important in its totality, not just the portion you quoted. Note that the text starts with "The second most powerful factor was one’s primary source of network news. Analysis shows the factor to be highly significant, but assessing each network is difficult." I could find no place in the article where the actual numerical results of the regression analysis is reported, instead, as in this quote, they just report the order of their importance, but not quantitatively how much more important each factor was than the one below it.
Next in the same paragraph, to ease the difficulty in assessing each network "To determine the relative importance of each network as a primary source of news, another regression was performed, treating each network as a binary variable and comparing each network’s respondents to other respondents. When this analysis is performed, having Fox, CBS, or NPR/PBS as one’s primary news source emerges as the most significant predictor of a particular misperception and of misperceptions in general." From this language, it looks like a second regression analysis was performed, where the networks are analyzed only against the "misperceptions". And in the next paragraph, I quote "Overall, Fox viewing has the greatest and most consistent predictive power in the analysis on a variety of these statistical measures." Once again, the language suggests that, Fox is only being compared against the other networks. Combine that with the first statement in your second quote which I repeat here, "Fox is the most consistently significant predictor of misperceptions." Everything, indicates that this 2nd regression analysis and the figures reported in table 9, have not subtracted out the influence of the most important predictor, which was support for president Bush. This caught my attention in even my very first reading of the paper, because I wanted to understand these figures. Did you find any evidence that I missed? Without this evidence, then it is difficult to interpret this conclusion in your quote: "Those who primarily watched Fox were 2.0 times more likely to believe that close links to al Qaeda have been found,...". Is this 2.0, taking Fox news as an independent predictor of the individual "misperceptions" without accounting for support for president Bush, as it appears to be, or it is what we would really like to know for our purposes here, which is, is it a predicter of some smaller residual whose size is unspecified, after the predictive value of preference for Bush is removed. It does not look to me like the influence of Bush has been removed in these figures.
The above analysis is the reason, I felt I could make this statement "Fox just had more Bush supporters among its viewers" Fox is just one of three signficant predictors within the second most signficant predictor. If the networks were evaluated independently instead of having their predictive power aggregated in this second predictor, Fox itself may be behind support for the democratic candidate and education as predictors.--Silverback 11:37, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I would like to take your quote 3 next about the "attention to news", note that it was not a significant predictor but that they do a special analysis in which Fox is the only one to be statistically signficant, given the larger numbers this is hardly surprising. But the very next pargraph begins with "The third most powerful factor was intention to vote for the Democratic nominee." We already know the "attention to news" was not the first, second or now even the third most powerful predictor. In fact we are given no idea where it stands, it wasn't among the four predictive factors they noted, and they don't report whether it is with or without the other predictors, once again, Fox may just have had more Bush supporters. The study it seems leaves us in ignorance, there are other issues with the "attention to news" variable, note on page 14, this quote "Attention to news coded as a binary form, however, became insignificant while remaining significant as a continuous variable." Note on page 19 before the regression analysis, there is also a section on "attention to news", there is this quote "Only in the case of those who primarily got their news from print did misperceptions decrease with lower levels of attention, though in some cases this occurred for CNN viewers as well." and later on the same page "With increasing attention, those who got their news from print were less likely to have all three misperceptions. Of those not following the news closely, 49 percent had the misperception that evidence of close links has been found, declining to 32 percent among those who followed the news very closely." Note, if you read the "attention to news" in this report in its entirety, the authors give the distinct impression that they are treating increased misperceptions with increasing attention, separately from decreased misperceptions with decreased attention, as in the print media. Futhermore, note that "in some cases this occurred with CNN viewers as well". Evidently for some reason, there are multiple cases with CNN viewers, I couldn't figure out what this meant, unless for some reason they have started talking about the responses of particular individuals. Also, it appears that the analysis later in the paper where the "attention to news" is analyzed among the networks, for some reason does not include the print media that was found notable earlier. The language only refers to networks and not the total sample, it appears that some data is being selectively left out. --Silverback 12:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Now to quote 1. This quote from page 25 is not a result reported by the study, but is in a subsequent "analysis" section which begins on page 23. This is where the authors are allowed to pontificate on what they think the results mean, and to consider evidence from sources other than their study and even here, they only "suggest" that differences in coverage were playing a role. Even this role may not be bias in the coverage, but given the emphasis they put on statements by the administration, it may be just more coverage of the president, and administration officials, perhaps due to the type of show, rather than the bias of the shows offered, or to greater viewer trust of the president because of support for him. The only mentions of bias in the whole report are from a quote from Cavuto on page 25. If you want to somehow get information from quote 1 into the post, something like this may be justified "The authors suggest that differences in coverage played a role in their results." --Silverback 12:26, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think most of comment 1 has already been addressed, support for Bush was the largest predictor, we don't know how much smaller the other predictors were, just their order. I have no objection to all the figures being put in for the other networks, but I do think my compromise is about as small as you can get and still be fair, what are your objections to it? If you expand to include too much of the data, more extensive notes about the details I mentioned above may be needed for fairness. However, just adding other percentages for those misperceptions already being reported should not represent any fairness problems.
Thanx for finally reading the report, more participants should. Perhaps they will spot issues that you and I missed.--Silverback 12:34, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Apologies for the difficult readability of the above. I have tried to clarify some of the points. It was stream of consciousness, I tend to think and speak with a lot of dependent clasues and parentheticals. In the medium of speach most of what I wrote would have clearer, because inflections in my voice would have made references of clauses and parentheticals clearer. Let me know if some point is unclear. --Silverback 05:23, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your last reply has been awkwardly long, so I apologise if I have taken longer than expected to reply. Your first point about the word "significant" does not seem particularly relevant to this discussion; I have always interpreted "significant" to mean "statistically significant" if they are speaking within the context of discussing a finding from the results. Furthermore, your point about the relationship between the "significance" of a finding and that of sample size (esp with relation to FOX)appears rather irrelevant, simply because on page 14 the quote you have referenced states:

  • All findings in this section were statistically significant at the p<0.05 level, except where noted.

A larger sample size for FOX viewers stems simply from the fact that FOX is the "most watched cable news channel", as noted by the article on FOX News itself. Your subsequent sub-points about FOX is also quite irrelevant simply because you have not shown that the smaller sample size for all the other news networks viewers were small enough such that the findings are out of the +/- 5% margin of error this study uses. Hence the finding within that section stands.

Now I'll address your claim that you think support for President Bush appears to be playing a large role (ie. has not been removed to account for lopsided level of misperception for FOX viewers). If I am not wrong, the statistical method they employed, logistic regression analysis, allows for the determination of the relative strength several factors in predicting a known result. Hence within the 2nd regression analysis , it does appear to me as if the intention to vote Bush was excluded, or adjusted in a way such that it did not affect the findings for FOX significantly. Note that:

  • To determine which factors had the most power to predict the likelihood ofmisperceiving, we performed a binary logistic regression analysis, together with eight other factors. Four of the factors were demographic: gender, age, household income, and education. Two other categorical factors were party identification and intention to vote for the President in the next election, as opposed to an unnamed Democratic nominee. In addition, we included the factors of how closely people follow events in Iraq and what their primary news source was. The odds ratio statistic was used to determine the likelihood that respondents would have misperceptions. (Page 22)

and

  • Variations in the level of misperceptions according to news source may be related to variations in the political orientations of the audience. However, when political attitudes were controlled for the variations between the networks and the same attitudes still obtained, it suggests that differences in reporting by media sources were playing a role. (Page 25)

which suggests to me the 2nd regression analysis did take into account the first, which treated the factor intention to vote Bush separately from the choice of news networks. Furthermore, if you were correct about the factor about the intention for voting for Bush not being excluded, then you would be alleging that the above quote from page 25 were a complete contradiction to the results to the study, something you have not proven. This is not something which, as you claim, was a mere pontification. The bolded part of the sentence clearly indicates that the political orientations of the audience of the various news networks were already factored into the study. You seem to be interpreting the word "suggests" too literally.

You've made a mistake in your page 22 quote above, it is really from page 21. There is no indication that the second regression analysis took into account the support for Bush and some of the other variables. The description of the second regression analysis is on 22 and far less detailed and apparenly just regresses the networks against the misperceptions. I conclude this from what detail they include and from this quote on page 22, "Fox is the most consistently significant predictor of misperceptions." The overall conclusion from the study is that support for Bush is the most significant contributer. So it still should have been if it was included in this second regression analysis, it apparently was not included, so the results and their statistical signicance are without account for the greater number of Bush supporters among Fox viewers. The statement you cite from page 25, must refer to results they did not report. Note, they did not state how they controlled for "political attitudes", they did say earlier on page 21 "when the analysis controls for support for the President, this party difference largely disappears." If in an analysis that they did not report, they attempted to control for party difference instead of support for the president, then the result in your quote from 25 could be an artifact of not controlling for those democratic supporters of Bush who also congregate to Fox news. I really do think we are left in ignorance here. I think probably because much of their analysis did not survive peer review. It would be interesting to know if they will make their raw data available.--Silverback 20:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have ignored your speculative point about "If the networks were evaluated independently instead of having their predictive power aggregated in this second predictor, Fox itself may be behind support for the democratic candidate and education as predictors" simply because I do not think you were right about your analysis reached before assuming this conclusion.

Now I'll address your point on the level of attention to the news. The following clearly states that it is FOX's viewers which are more likely (statistically significant here) to misperceive the more they are exposed to FOX.:

  • Level of attention to news was not a significant factor overall, with the exception of those who primarily got their news from Fox. This is consistent with the finding that Fox viewers were more likely to misperceive the more closely they followed events in Iraq. Multiplicative variables were derived for each network by multiplying attention to news by each network dummy variable. A multivariate analysis was performed on misperceptions in which each new combined network-attention level variable was added to the previous model. The results show that Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news.
I believe your highlights in the above quote, show that you are reading too much into statistical significance. The fact that Fox was the only network to achieve statistical significance. In any situation with a low signal and small sample size, the variable with the largest sample represention will be the first to achieve statistical significance, even if everything else is equal. Your quote about this is from page 23, and it appears to me that the "previous model" they are refering to is the 2nd regression analysis where they did not control for the other factors including support for Bush, but only ran the network variables (this time weighted by attention) against the misperceptions.--Silverback 20:29, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Of course there are dozens of possible explanations for this phenomena, one of which (I do not rule out) that supporters of Bush may tend to watch FOX longer than others, which does explain. But then, supposing I accept ALL your reasoning about the presence of Bush supporters playing a large role in the findings of misperceptions. This still doesn't explain why Bush supporters tend to watch FOX news, or as you put it, why "FOX had more Bush supporters". Care to suggest an explanation here? Does it really matter whether the study takes into account the ranking of "level of attention to news" with respect to the 4 most important factors? What really matters here is the statistical significance; NONE of the news networks' viewers EXCEPT FOX had "level of attention" calculated as a statistically significant factor in likelihood of misperception. This itself is an important result, irrelevant of ranking (Ranking doesn't matter because we haven't agreed only to include results from the 4 most important factors or something like that).

I think it is easy to explain why Fox attracts more Bush supporters, it has successfully played up its "Fair and Balanced" approach, which appears to be purposely designed to attract those who those who think the other networks have a liberal bias. While I don't have evidence, it doesn't suprise me that Bush has greater support among this group. Fox has successfully differentiated itself at least in terms of image.--Silverback 20:34, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also, the study does not "leaves us in ignorance" (or at least not purposefully in a political sense). Do you really expect every single datum from the analysis of all the news networks to be included within that article in PSQ? As for the part on "in some cases this occurred with CNN viewers as well", the authors were referring to the fact that:

  • CNN viewers showed slightly, but significantly, lower levels of misperception on finding WMD and world public opinion at higher levels of attention, though not on evidence of links to al Qaeda. (page 19)

As for your claim that the authors were "treating increased misperceptions with increasing attention, separately from decreased misperceptions with decreased attention, as in the print media", I could find no evidence for such except for the first part of your statement which I quoted:

  • In the case of those who primarily watched Fox, greater attention to news modestly increased the likelihood of misperceptions. Only in the case of those who primarily got their news from print did misperceptions decrease with lower levels of attention, though in some cases this occurred for CNN viewers as well.

In other words, CNN viewers were slightly different from others in that increased level of attention paid meant that they had lower levels of misperceptions on WMD in Iraq and world opinion, but increased attention was correlated positively with greater likelihood to misperceive on links to al-Qaeda. The part on the print media audience also seems a little confused:

  • Only in the case of those who primarily got their news from print did misperceptions decrease with lower levels of attention

which seems to conflict with

  • With increasing attention, those who got their news from print were less likely to have all three misperceptions

unless in the first case they were specifically referring to the slight anomally of the question for print media audience on whether WMD had been found:

  • Those who did not follow the news at all were far more likely to misperceive (35 percent) that WMD had been found than the other levels (not very, 14 percent; somewhat, 18 percent; very, 13 percent).

Either that, or it must have been some typographical error with the first quote above (probably writing "lower levels of attention" instead of "higher levels of attention").

As for the reason as to why the figures for the print media audience did not appear in the later comparison of the level of attention to the different news networks, it could be due to the fact that it is entirely a matter of statistical significance :

  • Level of attention to news was not a significant factor overall, with the exception of those who primarily got their news from Fox...The results show that Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news. (page 23)

I do not think the that the data has been "selectively left out". They could have done so for the purposes of readability. I believe I have addressed most of the points you have raised and clarified the validity of the quotes I have invoked. Thank you for reading this. Ethereal 17:13, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Once again you are highlighting in your page 23 quote above, the significance of Fox over the other networks, in the attention influence that was not significant overall, apparently far lower than the 4th most powerful predictor and based on an analysis that did not control for the other predictors. The fact that data has been selectively left out, should NOT be interpreted as nefarious, it is likely due to it not surviving peer review, in fact it is suprising that what we have survived peer review.--Silverback 20:45, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think you are trading technical terms with rhetorical terms and using circumstantial logical fallacy, Silverback. Firstly, "not significant overall" does not mean that it is not a factor worthy to be considered, but that, in the average case per network, it is not significant. You are trading the term technical term "overall" (which i'm not sure is even the thecnical term here) with the rhetorical term, and thereby applying the ecological fallacy. Because it is not significant for any given network on average, that does not mean that for a particular network, it cannot be significant. Indeed, for FOX News, it is significant. The fact that it is not, on average, significant, is important not because that makes it not significant for FOX News, but because it makes the fact that it is significant for FOX News anomaluous; particular to FOX News, rather than the Norm.
If it was a significant factor on average, this would mean that this is the norm, and that there is nothing peculiar about FOX News, in regards to this variable. To make a simple analogy: If I struck a bunch of objects against a ruff surface, and the only one that started on fire was a match, then I would infer that there was something peculiar about the match, say, it's chemical makeup.
Now with regards circumstantial, I think Ethereal already explained that. And regarding "something suspicious abuot their data" - well, in statistics, it doesn't matter if a coin flips heads the first 50 times and tails the other 50 times, or alternates, it's still a binomial distribution with mean 0. If there was a way to show that such-and-such, which has been shown to be a significant predictor of such-and-such, is not a significant predictor of same, then it wouldn't be statistics (or mathematics, or logic, - it would violate the consistency rule).
In any case, we could certainly ask for the data. Kevin Baastalk 23:38, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)
I would agree with your analysis regarding attention to news if they ran the regression analysis in which attention to news was not significant when aggregated, and then ran the same regression analysis again, but with the networks unaggregated. I agree that Fox could show significance then as an independent predictor. However, that does not appear to be what they have done, they appear to have run a regression with only the attention to news weighted networks and the misperceptions, and that was the regression that showed Fox as the only one that was signficant. The problem I see with this, is that we don't know if Fox/attention is independant of the other predictors, and we don't know whether it achieved significance as run only because its sample size was larger or because its signal was strong.
I don't know quite get what your are reponding to with the circumstantial comment, perhaps it was because I left out the NOT in my nefarious comment?--Silverback 00:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

temporary header to keep from getting lost while editing

That was what i was responding to with that the circumstantial comment. I still have qualms with that comment: what conditions are you basing the probability assertion "likely" on, in regard to peer-review survivability?
Sorry, I haven't read past this yet, because I get the impression that you think I am basing this "likely" on internal evidence withing the document. I base it on the extensive changes, improvements and apparently some additional work done for this peer reviewed document when compared with the original report publicized at the PIPA site [3]. I will go ahead and read your comments, but wanted to correct any misimpression ASAP. --Silverback 04:49, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let me see if I understand your first para, by paraphrasing it:
Do I understand correctly that, it is your belief that, regarding the quotes from the report:
  • "In the case of those who primarily watched Fox, greater attention to news modestly increased the likelihood of misperceptions. Only in the case of those who primarily got their news from print did misperceptions decrease with lower levels of attention, though in some cases this occurred for CNN viewers as well."
  • "Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news."
(and you will understand that by your remark "...in the attention influence that was not significant overall, apparently far lower than the 4th most powerful predictor and" reinforced the impression that you were applying the ecological fallacy, and the context of that comment reinforced that impression even more. I'm inclined to believe that you are trying to cover-up an erred strategy by denying that that was what you meant, and were asserting "Once again".)
Sorry, I wasn't covering up anything, I was just dense, I wasn't getting how the ecological fallacy applied. And you are correct I was applying the ecological fallacy in a sense, but I don't think I was at too much risk. Yes, it is possible that attention*Fox could be significant, while the attention aggregate was not. This was not as bad as applying the norm to an individual. Fox itself is the largest sub-aggregate. Since the attention aggregate did not reach statistical significance, and since no other network*attention reached statistical significance, I think I was safe in assuming that the Fox*attention signal, even if significant, was not very strong, because it didn't raise the whole attention aggregate to significance. I admit there is possible risk here.--Silverback 06:08, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
regarding those quotes... the following quotes from the report do not apply:
  • "To determine which factors had the most power to predict the likelihood of misperceiving, we performed a binary logistic regression analysis, together with eight other factors. Four of the factors were demographic: gender, age, household income, and education. Two other categorical factors were party identification and intention to vote for the President in the next election, as opposed to an unnamed Democratic nominee. In addition, we included the factors of how closely people follow events in Iraq and what their primary news source was. The odds ratio statistic was used to determine the likelihood that respondents would have misperceptions."
  • "Variations in the level of misperceptions according to news source may be related to variations in the political orientations of the audience. However, when political attitudes were controlled for the variations between the networks and the same attitudes still obtained, it suggests that differences in reporting by media sources were playing a role."
If that is what you believe, I have a number of more specific questions:
  • Do you dispute that it is more likely that "political attitudes" refers to all factors contributing to the political "attitude" (notice the word "affiliation" was not used, nor was the phrase "party affiliation", which would have been much more obvious and direct if that was what was meant), than any specific factor, such as voting for Bush or party affiliation? Esp. insofar as:
  • The two categories are grouped in the sentence "Two other categorical factors were", as other similiar items are grouped into categories by being grouped in sentences, totaling three groups.
  • The correlation between party affiliation and voting for the candidate of one's party affiliation is known, and is evident in the voting record for prior years and for 2004, to be very high; they are significant predictors of eachother. Therefore they have a high proportion of mutual information, and when one of the two is controlled for, the other is, to the extent of said mutual information, controlled for.
No, I don't dispute either of these, although I don't think the second is needed, because this study found that support for Bush more predictive than party, apparently because Republican and Democratic supporters of Bush were in this case more similar to each other than to the balance of their political parties.--Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Do you dispute that the (admittedly rather confusing) phrase "variations between the networks and the same attitudes still obtained" most likely means that for (a) a given network and a given attitude, and (b) a different network and the same attitude, the statistical differences still remained - "obtained", and furthermore that:
Yes, I agree that the authors are saying that the variations between networks obtained even after adjusting for attitudes but I question whether this "attitude" is the same, as the one in the paper proper that included both party affilliation and preference for president.--Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • This statistical difference remains statistically significant, insofar as "All findings in this section were statistically significant at the p<0.05 level, except where noted.", and it is not noted that this is not statistically significant.
I dispute this, because the "obtained" statement above this is on page 25 in the analysis section and is not one of the findings of the report. This result that it discusses was not disclosed in the previous sections of the report. I did not interpret the statistically significant statement as applying to discussion in the analysis section which brings in other information. Although, the results could be statistically significant in some undisclosed analysis.--Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Do you dispute that in the quote from the report "Multiplicative variables were derived for each network by multiplying attention to news by each network dummy variable. A multivariate analysis was performed on misperceptions in which each new combined network-attention level variable was added to the previous model. The results show that Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news.", it is most likely that the "model" refers to the Generalized_linear_model used in the logistic regression?
Hmmm, I think you are correct in the type of analysis performed, but not in what was meant by model. From the context and as confirmed by the "only Fox" conclusion there on page 23, the "previous model" refers to the second regression analysis, that does not include the attitude or preference information.--Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • And that therefore the principal component analysis effect of logistic regression subtracted out duplication in the predictive ability in the factors (I mean in the sense that A & B = A + B - A * B); that is, in this case, the significance of a predictor (factor) refers to the information (predictive power) in that factor that is not in the other factors?
  • Do you dispute that it is most likely that the "odds ratio" that was "used to determine the likelihood that respondents would have misperceptions.", is taken from the exponential of the left side of the equation in the logistic regression?
  • And that this "odds ratio" "was used to determine the likelihood that respondents would have misperceptions", that was refered to in the sentence "Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news."?
  • And that in the sentence "Variations in the level of misperceptions according to news source may be related to variations in the political orientations of the audience. However, when political attitudes were controlled for the variations between the networks and the same attitudes still obtained." (or however this was worded), this "misperception" refered to the statistical quantity on the right side of the Generalized_linear_model equation used in the logistic regression, from which the above-mentioned "odds ratio" is taken?
No, this is in the analysis section, there is no indication that in the network*attention against misperceptions analysis reported in the paper, that these attitudes were included. See pages 22 and 23. If what is being discussed here on page 25 is other results that after peer review were not reported in the paper proper, I suspect that it was because their analysis was not consistent with the rest of the paper. We don't know what they did, but from what they say and assuming good faith on their part, they attempted to control for political attitudes somehow. Yes they may have done it properly using all the variables so that those with duplication of predictive ability would have been subracted out. But if they did that, there must be a reason it wasn't included, although that reason may be as innocuous as limited word counts the journal imposes on its articles. What I suspect, based on nothing more than a hunch, is that the insignificance of political party in predictive power after the strong presidential preference variable was not discovered until later in their work, after earlier analysis referred to in this section was done using only party affiliation. Yes, party affiliation would still have strong predictive power, but in a simplified analysis with the networks and the misperceptions, some residual predictive power would be attributed to Fox, that in retrospect may have been better explained by presidential preference. The right variables have to be included. Note, even though PIPA definitely has its political biases, I still assume good faith. I believe their original report was out, and to help with any criticism they wanted the respectability of peer review publication as soon as possible. Sometimes this means you haven't run every permutation of the variables that in retrospect you would like to have run. --Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I probably have more, but this comment is sufficient as is. Kevin Baastalk 03:44, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)
Yes it helped me understand what you meant. I think we would be in agreement if all the information was there. Hopefully we can also reach agreement about which information is not disclosed in enough detail or which possible interpretations cannot be rigously distinguished because of this.--Silverback 06:52, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It turns out Silverback was wrong on whether the 2nd regression analysis included FOX's Bush supporters or not. Or so it seems, according to this link I provided quite some time ago but did not read quite carefully enough then [[4]]. The quote within the news report reads:

  • PIPA found that political affiliation and news source also compound one another. Thus, 78 percent of Bush supporters who watch Fox News said they thought the United States had found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, while 50 percent of Bush supporters who rely on NPR/PBS thought so. Conversely, 48 percent of Fox viewers who said they would support a Democrat believed that such evidence had been found. But none of the Democrat-backers who relied on NPR/PBS believed it.

A quote from the original PIPA article (the one which was replaced by the PSQ version) [5] also seems to back this up:

  • It is tempting to assume that political bias can explain variations in misperceptions and can account for variations in those who get their news from various news sources. However, this idea is contradicted by the data on several fronts.
  • Supporters of a Democratic nominee also have significant misperceptions. Almost a third—32%--did believe that the US has found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaeda. If this misperception was simply a function of a political position, one would not find it held by such a large proportion of those who do not intend to vote for Bush.
  • Also, while Bush supporters are more likely than supporters of a Democratic nominee to have misperceptions, for both groups, respondents’ choices of a news source make a significant difference in how prevalent misperceptions are. For example, 78% of Bush supporters who watch Fox News thought the US has found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, but only 50% of Bush supporters in the PBS and NPR audience thought this. On the other side, 48% of Democrat supporters who watch Fox News thought the US has found evidence of a direct link to al-Qaeda, but not one single respondent who is a Democrat supporter and relies on PBS and NPR for network news thought the US had found such evidence. (All on page 21) Ethereal 16:58, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)


Three points: There is no evidence to indicate this is the 2nd regression analysis. why didn't this survive peer review? Which is the outlier Fox or NPR/PBS and are they statistically significant, note the other network results are not reported. There is some reason it did not survive peer review, perhaps it was no longer significant after some of the data was rejected by the peer reviewers, perhaps the effect disappeared when other predictors were included, such as income and education. Even if it was statistically significant and Fox was the outlier in a separate regression that included only network, support for Bush or the democratic candidate and misperceptions and it was a perfectly good analysis, if the peer reviewers knew that the effect was explained by other variables in a separate analysis that included them, it should and hopefully would reject the more limited misleading analysis. In the peer review literature, you disclose not just your results and conclusions, but also your methods.--Silverback 11:20, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Geez, Silverback, this isn't the X-Files!
Who are the outliers? The ones with misperceptions! If they all have misperceptions, they're all outliers. Why Kevin, that doesn't make any statistical sense! - Because the mean of the aggregate is not the news reports, but what actually happened in reality, and the degree of misperception is the distance from that mean. So, okay, I was exagerrating when I said they all can be outliers - but it is true that only ones that are furthest from the mean (in this case, reality: fair and balanced news reporting) than the farthest one are outliers. Now if news reporting on this planet has anything to do with what goes on on this planet, then the mean for the aggregate of news report should be close to the mean for the aggregate of reality - minimal misperceptions. If it was inverted, well, I think we'd have much bigger things to worry about than this article, like our education system and decentralization of media control, for instance.
Now you tell me, is a >25% discrepancy accross the board statistically significant, with a sample size of say, more than five?
Sure, let the effect be explained by other variables. Great! Now tell me this: if bob has 10 blue easter eggs, and jill has 10 red easter eggs, and 5 of those have jelly beans in them, while 7 of bob's blue ones do, and 3 of bob's eggs have hershey's kisses, while 5 of jill's does. now let's say bill' easter eggs graduated from harvard and make $200k a year, while jill's didn't graduate and make $10k a year, how many red easter eggs does jill have? Don't think too hard on this one.
It appears you are going wayyy out of your way to discredit this report, Silverback. It's not an evil conspiracy by the evil PIPA clan, and frankly, I have better things to do than write paragraphs like the one above. Kevin Baastalk 17:19, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)
I think you've put the shoe on the wrong foot. With all the entries already in allegations of bias, why are others going to extremis to put this arguably marginally related article in? It is the veneer of science. I agree with you that misperceptions are a concern and should be, although probably not about which ones are misperceptions. The reason I mentioned "outliers", is that I think it is very important to the anti-Fox POV pushers here, that Fox be the outlier, however, with only Fox and NPR/PBS being results reported for this statistic and not the other networks we don't have that information. NPR/PBS would be a difficult standard for any of the networks to meet. I'm not convinced that PIPA selected which results to report with objectivity in mind.
If you wonder why I'm putting forth this effort, I do hope it is educational, but also, misuse and misrepresentation of science is one of my pet peeves, thus my interest in both the Global warming and the OJ Simpson issues. The former is probably clear, but in the OJ Simpson case, I was appalled that the state wanted the credibility of science without having to meet the standards required for that credibility, of course, along the way we found out there is no longer the right to compell testimony under the penalty of perjury in the United States.--Silverback 18:05, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Granted, that comparison is probably the most persuasive comparison possible, and thus there is cause for suspicion. However, hose suspicions, though legitimate subjects for the talk pages, should not make their way into the article, just as embellishments shouldn't - that would be original research/POV/not strictly logical.
Regarding "outliers" again, granted PBS/NPR aren't very informative in demonstrating the variance of the distribution, esp. from a maximum likelihood estimation pov - a technical/mathematical pov. I say this because in concerns outliers, the variance (or more generally, the second moment) is the question. Thus, I agree on this point that, from that comparision, "we do not have that information", or more precisely we have very little information.
I'd like to somewhat dispute or at least check a subtle and probably negligible point: in concerns the "difficulty" of being like pbs or npr - technically, they all have cameras and access to the information in question. That is, there are no physical obstacles. Technically, it's simply a matter of what they chose to present and how they chose to present it, and PBS/NPR doesn't present that steep of a learning curve - indeed, merely taking the advice from the report in question, which is simple to execute, would probably get them more than have of the way there. The questions in concerns difficulty are resources and profitability. I'm willing to submit to the theory that profitability might pose a problem. Indeed, PBS and NPR operate under quite different economic models/circumstances.
But perhaps instead of practical difficulty, you meant aleatory probability - a function of the mean and variance of the probability distribution. If one sets the mean at no skew/distortion - given, that is, equal probability to news being slanted "left", "right", or what-have-you - then PBS & NPR, being correlated with less "misperceptions", are much closer to the mean and have therefore a higher aleatory probability than FOX. That is, it is more "difficult" (improbable) to be like FOX than like PBS or NPR. Kevin Baastalk 06:56, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)
Yes, I did not mean to imply PBS/NPR had higher standards, just that it was difficult to be like them statistically with their atypical demographics on several fronts including political preferences. I saw a CSPAN2, BookTV talk by Simon Singh, author of "Big Bang: Origin of the Universe" yesterday. He performed and interesting demonstration during his talk, where he played a Led Zeppilin song track and then played it backward. He asked the audience if they had heard certain words (like Satan) when it was played backwards. Practically noone did. He then stated that he was going to play it again, and this time they would hear these words, and he played it with a bouncing ball type presentation of some lyrics. The whole audience heard all the lyrics, you find yourself wondering how you didn't hear them before. The point he was making, was when data is bad, expectations have a significant impact on what order you perceive since the human mind is looking for order. When PIPA constructs a study of perceptions in a complex situation with bad or conflicting data, in such a way that only one political direction is analyzed as a "misperception", the News sources with audiences with expectations of perceptions in that direction will be more likely to have those perceptions. Note, that in this passage from the question formulated with the 4 part answer:
  • Thus in February we offered respondents four options for describing “the relationship between the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein and the terrorist group al-Qaeda.” Indeed, only 20% chose the option that “Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Another 36% chose the position that “Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks” –still a position at odds with the dominant view of the intelligence community, but less egregiously so. Twenty-nine percent chose the position that has some evidence in support of it, that “a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials.” Just 7% chose the option, “There was no connection at all.” (non peer reviewed PDF page 5)
The 4th alternative "There was no connection at all.", could also be labeled a misperception, yet PIPA did not analyze it as such in either version. I suspect, that Fox viewers would be significantly less likely to have this misperception.--Silverback 13:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As to the report, so, too, to the News station. Kevin Baastalk 16:52, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)
And I happen to be one degree of separation from Bill Clinton, but that doesn't make me part of the Monika Lewinsky affair. Saddam Hussien and al-Qaeda are enemies. To say that there was a collaborative relation is like saying that George W. Bush and John Kerry are in collusion - it's a right-wing conspiracy theory. The 9/11 report said that they have found "no collaborative relationship". So forgive those polled for misinterpreting the question, but if you ask me what connection I have to the Monika Lewinsky affair, I'm going to tell you, without hesitation, that I have "no connection at all". Now surely I'll be a little imprecise by way of the small-world phenomena, but I'm just going to put myself out on a limb and assume that you meant small-world phenomena notwithstanding; that you were looking for an answer that told you something you didn't already know; that was informative. Kevin Baastalk 17:02, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)
I can agree that it was the wrong answers to propose and the wrong way to phrase them if you wanted to conduct as study where you label some of the answers "misperceptions". PIPA was either not consistent in what they defined as a misperception or selective in what "misperceptions" they chose to analyze. Apparently they also did not include this "There was no connection at all." misperception in their aggregate analysis of misperceptions rates for the news organizations, nor did they include conduct an equivilent analysis to their "misperceptions"/"support for the war" connection. Although we can see from what they did report, that this "misperception" appeared to influence their lack of support for the war. "Among those who believed that there was no connection, 73 percent thought that going to war was the wrong decision."(peer reviewed page 10). Of course, in the analysis section there is also no corresponding analysis about what might have lead viewers to have this "misperception", although it probably was not statements by the administration.--Silverback 19:58, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Linguistics. I think it's pretty clear how people interpreted the question, and what they meant by their response. Taking everything we know now into consideration, including the 9/11 report, no degree of argument or persuasion will convince me that "misperception" is an accurate characterization of the response that "There was no connection at all." Linguistics. It's clear how people interpreted the question, and what they meant by their response. Kevin Baastalk 21:13, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

I guess we can agree that it is poorly worded, because "no collaborative relationship" is not inconsistent with "Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks" either. BTW, do you recall whether the 9/11 report was issued before or after the PIPA surveys?--Silverback 22:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would, on the contrary, consider that inconsistent. I think the proper term here is "collusion", and the idea that there would be any kind of collusion between Saddam Hussien and al-Qaeda is completely preposterious - they are enemies. One does not support one's enemies. If you're really that sadistic, there are more efficient ways to hurt yourself. I do not know the relative chronology of the two reports, but I would assume that the PIPA surveys followed the 9/11 reports, judging by the fact that they recognized "misperception" as an objective term in the context employed, and that the statistics were as they were - I remember reading an article in the NYT, somewhere between the 9/11 report and the new year, reporting the results of a survey that showed about a 50% misperception rate for Republicans, and a much lower one for Democrats. I vaguely recall the statistics in that article being somewhat higher than the PIPA report's, so I'd imagine that the PIPA report was sometime after that article. Kevin Baastalk 08:43, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)
The word collusion could be considered a corrollary to collaborative. I think the key phrase is "substantial support", which is very subjective, but many would say that giving al Zarqawi medical treatment and then granting him sanctuary would qualify as "substantial support". Saddam went beyond that and set him up in a camp where he trained other terrorists. Even back then al Zarqawi was considered an important al Qaeda operative. Since the camp was targeted towards creating trouble for Iran, it shows that Saddam and al Qaeda could cooperate against a common enemy, extending that cooperation to the United States would probably not be limited by any moral qualms on Saddam's part, just by some survival instinct.--Silverback 17:12, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
i'm aware that there were terrorist camps in the northern part of iraq, a part that saddam hussien has no control over, politically or militarily, and that since saddam was deposed, they've been able to expand to regions formerly controlled by saddam.
i'm not aware of any credible evidence that saddam hussien aided a religious terrorist organization that would love to see saddam's secular government overthrown as much as the christian right would love to cleanse the u.s. government of atheist democrats.
the camp creating trouble for iran and saddam having problems with iran may imply a common enemy, but it does not imply cooperation.
I would imagine, from what I understand of saddam, that he is more intelligent than you make him out to be - his survival instinct would most likely not lead him to pick a fight with a superpower, anymore than it would lead him to poke his head out of a spider-hole. Kevin Baastalk

This is not the place to report original research

This is not the place to report original research. I dont think that statistics or bias, or even evidence of bias is relevant to this article. FoxNEWS is "news." There is no common definiton of what news is. For example, there are "news" networks geared toward grade schoolers, and in that context the reportage of material passes through a filter which is appropriate for its viewership. For FoxNEWS viewers, the definition of news is likewise different from that of other "news sources," and therefore one must first ascertain the definition of "news," before going on to deal with evaluations of accuracy, truth, balance and other relativist definitions. FoxNEWS viewers may tend to operate on a whole different plane of existence, and may therefore tend to read between the lines rather than reading the lines themselves. That said, I think it would be polite leave out information which impugns or seems to insult the intelligence of the FoxNEWS viewership, or the factual accuracy of FoxNEWS itself. -==SV 23:54, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No. That is civicly irresponsible. That is a philosophy for children to take, not adults. I'll give you the definition of News: it is a flow of information from the empirical world to the human mind, just as vision is. More specifically, the information in the empirical world is encoded in a way suitable for rapid and long-distance dissemination, broken up, reassembled, and what have you as computers send packets over the internet, simulated on a t.v. screen or a newspaper or what have you, and finally decoded by the viewer/reader/what have you. The encoder is designed such that it is the inverse of the decoder; such that the final message recieved reflects the original message sent by the empirical world.
Thus, insofar as it is "news", it's correlation to the empirical world; it's "accuracy", is not only significant, but the preeminent subject. Now, if it was a science fiction mini-series or something like that, then, fine, fiction would be acceptable, but news is by definition non-fiction. There's a common definition of news for year: non-fiction. Here's some more: contemporaneous, non-interpretive. News is an information channel from the empirical world to people, and, as such, it's reliablility and information entropy (proportionality of representation) are tantamount considerations; are extremely relevant. Kevin Baastalk 00:57, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)


And I think it would be just plaing wrong to leave out information solely on the basis that it impugns or seems to insult the intellegence" of any given group of people. The truth is not always "polite", and to hold an encyclopeda to that restriction would be to sacrifice its ability to communicate reality for the sake of pandering to the sentiment of a few people. That something offends a particular group of people is not neccessarily an objection. (provided it is not simply abusive) Information reliability and proportional representation (i.e. factual accuracy and NPOV) are the basi upon which valid objections are made. For example, a bigoted statement (that might be ad hominem abusive (i.e. offensive, w/no logical validity) in form), can be objected to on the basis of both information reliability and proportional representation. However, "The 9/11 Commission report (which is "original research" if the PIPA report is "original research") states that the United States government did not have any credible evidence that Saddam Hussien possesed any WMD.", is factually accurate and represents empirical data in due proportion, (given that it's in context, and the information around it represents other facts commensurably), though it is not entirely "polite" to the POV, promulgated by the Bush Adminstration, that the exact opposite was true. Kevin Baastalk 06:26, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

Let's put this No original research argument to rest by noting the following from the Wikipedia project page:

  • All of the above may be acceptable content once they have become a permanent feature of the public landscape. For example:
  • the ideas have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal; or
  • the ideas have become newsworthy: they have been independently reported in newspapers or news stories (such as the cold fusion story).

The PIPA report was both reported in the news [6] and published in a peer-reviewed journal (PSQ) [7]. Hence there's no argument against its inclusion. I hereby state that all attempts to remove it is clearly unjustified from now on. Ethereal 16:40, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, however, lets be careful, the news report you reference is NOT about the same report that survived peer review. Also, even peer reviewed information should be properly represented and used and is not immune to criticism.--Silverback 11:25, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC) The NOT above was added after the comment below. Apologies.--Silverback 13:03, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree. All studied and attributed criticism should be immune to unattributed, original criticism. -==SV 01:30, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think we are all in agreement on that, minus, possibly, a subtlety or two in the choice of word "immune" - certainly we agree that unattributed criticism does not belong in any wikipedia article, but "immune" implies intrinsic invalidity and impotency in the criticism, and that does not follow from the critism being attributed or not, rather it is a function of the intrisic merits of the criticism; the soundness of the premises and the validity of the logical structure of the criticism. That is, appeal to authority is not a fallacy that some of us are willing to submit to, intellectually or otherwise, anymore than some of us are willing to inject our POV into an article, as we would consider that irresponsible. Kevin Baastalk 09:06, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

not a demonstratable misperception

Ethereal, in your reason for removing the information where the CBS figure was higher than Fox's you are being more discriminating the PIPA was in their report, I quote, and add a highlight:

  • As discussed, the view that Iraq was directly involved in September 11 is not a demonstrable misperception, but it is widely regarded as fallacious by the intelligence community. In this case, the highest level of misperceptions was in the CBS audience (33 percent) followed by Fox (24 percent), ABC (23 percent), NBC (22 percent), and CNN (21 percent). Respondents who got their news primarily from print media (14 percent) and NPR or PBS (10 percent) were less likely to choose this description. (page 16)

Note also, immediately following, is another quote where Fox is not the highest:

  • Combining the above group with those who had the less egregious but still unproven belief that Iraq gave substantial support to al Qaeda, the pattern was similar. Among CBS viewers, 68 percent had one of these perceptions, as did 66 percent of Fox viewers, 59 percent of NBC viewers, 55 percent of CNN viewers, and 53 percent of ABC viewers. Print readers were nearly as high at 51 percent, while NPR/PBS audiences were significantly lower at 28 percent.

Btw, we have to be careful about which data the statements are about, for instance the question about substantial support appears to have been asked alone in some instances, and as part of a 4 part answer in others, and when used as part of the four part answer, the first part was the direct support to al Qaeda and the substantial support component was analyzed in combonation with it below in another instance in which CBS figures are higher than Fox's:

  • Thus in February we offered respondents four options for describing “the relationship between the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein and the terrorist group al-Qaeda.” Indeed, only 20% chose the option that “Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Another 36% chose the position that “Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda, but was not involved in the September 11th attacks” –still a position at odds with the dominant view of the intelligence community, but less egregiously so. Twenty-nine percent chose the position that has some evidence in support of it, that “a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials.” Just 7% chose the option, “There was no connection at all.” (page 5 non-peer reviewed)

This quote from the peer reviewed version, shows that it also used four part answers in some instances:

  • When asked to characterize the relationship between the previous Iraqi government and al Qaeda given four choices, 29 percent of Bush supporters said, “Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.” Only 15 percent of Democratic supporters chose this description. (page 20 peer reviewed)

The surveys that serve as raw data were apparently not consistently designed with a peer review publication in mind, but rather a publishable study was attempted to be made out of them after the fact, not all survived peer review, and it looks to me like more survived peer review than should have. It seems clear that the report analyzes data from several surveys, and that for the questions we are interested there are at least two separate grouping of data. The necessary "predictor" demographic and preference attitude and party affiliation data, may not be present to the same extent of completeness in both.

In fairness, shouldn't we also include these results from the four part answers, in which CBS shows worse than Fox. Based on what PIPA publicized and also emphasized in their non-peer reviewed report, it seems they were after Fox and not CBS, but we don't need to retain that bias.--Silverback 11:59, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You keep claiming that a lot has been excluded from the PSQ version because they "did not survive peer review". Have you ever considered the alternative that PSQ wanted to exclude them simply to shorten the article? I believe you should exclude the CBS figures because the section is titled "Allegations of bias", which refers to the alleged bias of FOX News, not CBS News. The PIPA report is not meant to be be included because we are interested in presenting its results, but because a part of it is relevant to the section on "Allegations" and it is precisely that part, and not others which should be included to preserve relevance.
Also, you are free to dispute the PIPA report in any way you deem fit, so long as you do not insert your comments (unless backed up by news reporting or a counter-study published in a peer-reviewed journal) into the main article itself. Ethereal 02:56, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was the first to suggest the alternative, search above for "as innocuous as limited word counts". The point of including CBS figures would be a balanced representation of the PIPA entry in the article. Those "misperceptions" where Fox is the highest are the only ones that have been included, where is data where Fox is the 2nd highest not also relevant? A skewed study is being further biased by those who want to include this in the article. Fox probably had the lowest level of misperception of any network on the "There was no connection at all" at all misperception, for which PIPA chose not to report the broadcast network breakdown.
Also, I think you are misapplying the NOR policy. It was meant to keep out crackpot theories, not factual (even if critical) comments about what reports did or did not consider.--Silverback 17:35, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
One note about the NOR policy on Wikipedia. I believe it was included so that others would not claim to be fighting for NPOV status when all they are doing is simply insert original, unsubstantiated arguments into articles. The reason why I think we should not include your specific contentions about the report is because I believe many of your objections to the PSQ report as discussed above stem from an argument from ignorance (ie. ignorance of actual statistics excluded from the PSQ version). If you would actually request the missing data from PIPA, as I have, you would find that a number of your claims are invalid (not counting the anti-PIPA ad hominem ones.) Ethereal 02:31, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I would not label that a misperception, as discussed earlier. The way that the people who say that "there was no connection at all", when given the facts, do not consider those facts to represent a "connection" in the sense that "connection" would be commonly interpreted.
The most relevant is when you put all the data together and find which news station is, in the aggregate, responsible for the most misperceptions, after adjusting for prior bias of the viewers (political attitude). To put the (statistically) least significant information in the article instead of the most significant information (the aggregate), would be skewed, as would putting them side by side in the name of "balance" - the "balanced" way to do it is to give space in the article proportional to statistical significance. Kevin Baastalk 04:30, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

To show that I am willing to compromise, Silverback, I now state that I am now willing to allow the figures for the poll question on which CBS scored higher than FOX. However, this does not detract from the fact that overall, it was found that FOX was a consistently more significant predictor of viewership misperception than CBS, even when the influence of Bush supporters have been removed from the analysis. Ethereal 15:06, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I recognize the inclusion of misperceptions of CBS views as a relevancy and relative statistical significance (in concerns proportional representation, i.e. balance) issue. Kevin Baastalk`

I would also like to see that poll question included. However, I would like it to be give a seperate subpoint, and I would like to see the percentages for the other news sources, not just Fox and CBS. According to Figure 1 on page 575, 40% of sample had none the misperceptions in question and 60% had one or more. According to Table 4 on page 582, both Fox and CBS had a greater proportion of respondants with one or more misperceptions, while CNN, NBC, print media and NPR/PBS repondants had a lower proportion. (ABC was about par for the course, give or take a percentage point.)

It would appear that both Fox and CBS are "biased" in the same direction, but Fox more so than CBS. I don't find it all that shocking that CBS pulled out ahead of Fox on one single question. Giving CBS's percentage, but not the other new sources', would tend to make the reader think of CBS as a neutral "control". ABC would be a better reference point, or better yet, all the news sources. crazyeddie 22:20, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Faux News

"Faux News" (the name, not the website) appear to be quite notable indeed. See: [8] Ethereal 04:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've incorporated the link you found into a new section about Fox's involvement in various trademark disputes. I wasn't able to find anything about what happened after Fox's threatening letter to Agitproperties. My guess is that Agitproperties couldn't recruit the pro bono lawyer it was quoted in that story as looking for, and that, unable to fight Fox in court, it simply had to give up and pull the merchandise. It makes me wonder about the Faux News parody site, though (http://www.fauxnewschannel.com/). It's set up very much like the real Fox site (in terms of its appearance, i.e., "trade dress"). From my limited knowledge of trademark, I'd think it would be more vulnerable than the Agitproperties site was. Perhaps Fox decided that another such attack would, as with Agitproperties, give publicity to the Fox critic, or perhaps this site was able to find a lawyer to defend its rights. JamesMLane 10:12, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Will do. Thanks for the addition of the new section. Ethereal 02:32, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Response from PIPA

I have sent an email to PIPA regarding Silverback's specific claim that the second regression analysis on page 22 took into account Bush supporters among FOX viewers. It turns out that the answer was yes (and Silverback was wrong). The following is the (unedited and original) email from PIPA:

  • His claims, in fact, are not factually accurate and reflect a misreading of the report. In each case the text followed a progression where strongest results were reported first, followed by ancillary results. Bush support was the strongest variable as indicated. Not all of the variables were included in the chart on the following page, however, since we were making a point about the effect of viewing habits.
  • As indicated, the variable coded for support for Bush was statistically significant and Party preference as Republican was not. Since both are statistically significant when the other is removed, this indicated some co-linearity between party preference and support for Bush. Since Republicans are significantly more likely to vote for Bush than Democrats they will be linearly related and one will inevitable overwhelm the statistical significance of the other, a point that makes intuitive sense.
  • We originally included the regression tables as an appendix in the PSQ article. PSQ, however, chose not to include these tables in their final editing decision. Several of the peer reviewers felt the tables distracted from the overall thrust of the report and it was recommended that they be simplified or removed given the lay audience that would likely be reading the articles.
  • For your benefit I have enclosed the regression tables that we sent to PSQ to support the passage in the article. Hopefully they will lay any concerns to rest. Please note that regardless of what variables we threw into the regression Fox news was consistently significant (we knew we would catch heat for this finding). I ran dozens of regression analyses to be sure and we chose the ones that minimized the power of Fox news the most. Analysis of the Wald and "Change in -2Log Likelihood" statistics were used to assess which of the media variables had the greatest predictive power.

(Emphasis added)

Kevin Baastalk has also kindly uploaded the attached file (.doc file) here: [9]. So you see, Silverback, the reason for exclusion is really because of readability and not political bias (PSQ exluded it not PIPA). So far I have gone to the extent of

  • Finding a news report on the PIPA report.
  • Finding a peer-reviewed version of the PIPA report.
  • Engaging in (semi-meaningless) arguments with you over the contents of the PSQ version (thanks to Kevin here for helping point out technical points).
  • E-mailing PIPA about the report.
  • And finally, compromising, compromising and more compromising.

It would interesting to see what else you can come up with next. Ethereal 02:45, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How were the arguments meaningless? I also was not wrong. I quote myself "Without this evidence, then it is difficult to interpret this conclusion in your quote", and another quote from myself with emphasis added:
  • If the networks were evaluated independently instead of having their predictive power aggregated in this second predictor, Fox itself may be behind support for the democratic candidate and education as predictors.
I also use other qualifiers, such as "appears", etc. We just didn't know. In the peer reviewed version of the paper, Wald stastitics is mentioned only once and that is in a footnote, and it was unclear whether those were how all the analyses were carried out. We were left with speculation and little we could be sure of, to interpret the results.
Thanx for getting the deleted appendix, it was quite informative, especially the detail on each misperception. Yes, Fox is a significant independent variable with predictive value even with the influence of Bush support and other correlates removed.
You ask what else I could come up with next, I've already come up with it. Recall, that the figures for "Fox", are not specific to "Fox News", recall that Fox as an independant variable may be due to something other than bias, recall that PIPA was biased in not analyzing “There was no connection at all.” as a misperception, where perhaps Fox viewers would probably hold less than any of the other networks, and PBS/NPR would probably have the most evidence of bias in their news (if you interpret these results as evidence of bias).
I could also make futher minor criticisms of PIPA's methods after reviewing this latest data, for instance it is bad practice to leave Republican in their model once they found out it wasn't significant. I would also like to have seen more work on how independent the Fox/"support for Bush" variables were.
My major criticism remains PIPA's bias, not just failing to report and analyze the “There was no connection at all.” misperception, but also in not having other questions that gave non-Bush supporters a chance to demonstrate their misperceptions, that perhaps contributed significantly to their opposition to the war. For instance, they could have been asked several questions about statements Bush made and whether they thought he was lying on those statements. Of course, if Bush was correctly reporting intelligence estimates at the time, he would not be lying, whether the statements were ultimately false or not. I suspect that PBS/NPR viewers would have the strongest misperceptions here, and Fox viewers would come out on top. Implying by your reasoning of course, that Fox coverage was less biased.
As for compromises, I hope neither one of us compromised our principles. I didn't put PIPA text under the bias section, although I have allowed others to do so. I voluntarily retracted one PIPA counterpoint, you have the PIPA report in there without any counterpoints. Do you feel the current PIPA text in anyway misrepresents the reports? I didn't have principled opposition all the percentages being put in, so it wasn't much of a compromise to allow that. But overall the PIPA text is as fair as using a biased source can be. What do you feel that you compromised?--Silverback 04:16, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I haven't read your full post yet, but i do feel that this should be pointed out immediately: contrary to popular misperception, the intelligence reports did not report evidence of WMD, links to al queda (sp?), etc. etc. The intelligence reports were not false. They were accurate. What Bush said was not supported by the intelligence. From a strictly logical standpoint, when he said that what he said was supported by intelligence, he was lying through his teeth. And I can remember more than one occasion where parts of his speech were supposed to be stricken for falsely reporting intelligence, but were not taken out or were put back in, with knowledge that they were supposed to be stricken and why. Unfortunately, however, the report did not survey misperceptions to that regard, which from what I've seen run rampant. For instance, there was just an article in the local newspaper here, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about the CIA's "false and misleading intelligence". What false and misleading intelligence? I have yet to see or hear of such intelligence. I would imagine that the misperception that the CIA had intelligence that Saddam Hussien possesed WMD is even more widespread than the misperception that WMD have been found. Kevin Baastalk 05:29, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
I've heard the intelligence criticized, for instance the reports of mobile bio labs, had only one source, whose reliability some in the intelligence community were questioning. Perhaps the president should have been advised that using that intelligence was inadvisable, but using that intelligence would not be "lying". Applying the same kind of analysis to determine what was and was not a misperception as PIPA did, but hopefully without sentences subject to as much interpretation, we could come up with many statements that Bush made that would not be lies, but for which PBS/NPR viewers would probably have a statistically significant greater number of misperceptions than Fox. Apparently you would be one of the respondants with the misperceptions, although I don't know what network it would be associated with.--Silverback 06:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Apparently you would be one of the respondants with the misperceptions, Silverback. Saying that the intelligence proved or supported a claim that it did not, saying that it's meaning was clear and obvious, etc. etc. are all lies. saying that it is evidencec that SH has WMD is a lie. Also, syaing things that aren't true like "we have conclusive evidence that SH has WMD" is a lie. Also saying that SH posses an imminent threat to the U.S. is a very very imaginative lie a.k.a agitation and propaganda - but one not too hard to believe for many gullible people after 9/11. Bush lied. Bush lied many times, and the lies were big. Why don't you go and reread my post about things in his speech that were supposed to be removed because they were, from an objective intelligence standpoint, lies, witting lies. Kevin Baastalk 18:14, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
As i understand logistic regression analysis, each factor is ANDed together. So if you turn the vote for bush variable "on" and the "fox" variable on, you get, on the left side of the equation, a simple function of the probability that a person who voted for bush AND who's primary news source was Fox, had a given misperception. So you see, the Repub/vote for bush variables are already accounted for, by default: if you vote for bush, the likilihood of having a misperception is x, if you also watch fox, the likihood goes up by y. (more properly, is multiplied by or divided by y; such as doubled or halved)
This explains the great discrepancy in the significance of "vote for bush" vs. "republican" - if one votes for bush, the probability of having misperceptions is very high, if one is ALSO a republican, it goes up (or down) a little bit. If you take one out, the other absorbs the weighted sum of the coefficient. Kevin Baastalk 05:50, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)


The odds ratios can be multiplied together, if support for Bush has a ratio of 3.0 and Fox has a ratio of 2.0 for a given misperception, then a Bush supporting Fox view would be a factor of 6 more likely to have the misperception, than someone who was both not a Bush supporter and not a Fox viewer, since these are binary variables.--Silverback 06:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes indeed-dy. Kevin Baastalk 18:14, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
I don't see how the PIPA report is biased. it reports it's findings in a straightforward manner, without bias to any particular findings, as clearly stated in the email: in order of statistical significance. 06:09, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
opps, I correct myself: the report is biased, and the respondant is rather frank about this: it is stated in the email that the regressions that minimized the effect of Fox on misperceptions were used, so the choice of regressions were biased in favor of representing fox as a non-biased news source. Kevin Baastalk 06:14, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
The bias is in the choice of misperceptions. The did include some variables which were more important than Fox in explaining "misperceptions", but they may have also missed some, which may have lessened the influence of the Fox variable. --Silverback 06:42, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Are you frackin serious? Excuse me while I barf, SB. They picked the mispercerceptions that were the most severe, widespread, and well-known. The choice of misperception is clearly not bias - to say that the choice of misperceptions was biased is laughable. Sure, they didn't include the misperception that saddam hussien has blonde hair, so they're bias? Don't insult our intelligence. Kevin Baastalk 18:04, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
  • <<Recall, that the figures for "Fox", are not specific to "Fox News">>

Which we have made note of. Again, I'm not sure how much of an effect it has. Some, probably, but which way? Unfortunately, this study wasn't set up to control for that. But I don't think this flaw is serious enough to require the removal of the bullet point, so long as we make a note of it. crazyeddie 08:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • <<Recall that Fox as an independant variable may be due to something other than bias.>>

Granted. But bias is a strong candidate for casual agent. If FNC is only perceived to be biased towards Bush, the Iraq War, etc., then that might attract viewers who have a pre-existing bias themselves. On the other hand, if FNC is really biased, then that might make viewers more likely to hold the views in question. Or there might be some third mystery factor. What we have so far strongly indicates that bias, whether perceived or real, might be a factor. More research would be needed to sort it out.

I've been forced to watch FNC at work this past week, and it seems to me that the editoral coverage, at least, was certainly biased when it came to the Terri Schiavo case. I'm afraid I wasn't around to watch the news reporting. I understand the difference between editorals and news, but does the average viewer?

It seems to me that media bias is the strongest candidate for causing the prevalance of misperceptions. It seems to me that holding these misperceptions causes support for the Iraq War and for Bush, not the other way around. One way to doublecheck would be to correlate for if repondants voted for Gore or for Bush in the election of 2000, which would indicate if the respondant supported Bush prior to 9/11 and the lead up to the Iraq War. Unfortunately, AFAICT, the poll didn't ask that question.

I find it interesting that Silverback brought up a while back the bit about more Bush supporters watching Fox. I haven't gotten that far into my read of the report yet, but the obvious question is why do more Bush supporters watch Fox? Perhaps we should include that datum in the bullet point as well? crazyeddie 08:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • <<Recall that PIPA was biased in not analyzing “There was no connection at all.” as a misperception, where perhaps Fox viewers would probably hold less than any of the other networks, and PBS/NPR would probably have the most evidence of bias in their news (if you interpret these results as evidence of bias).>>

It is possible to be biased and to accurately report the truth at the same time. Even if PIPA is biased, that does not invalidate their report. Until some flaw can be found in their report, attempting to prove that PIPA is biased is no more than an ad hominem attack. On the other hand, the fact that PBS/NPR and Fox viewers are once again on opposite ends of the spectrum on a view that strongly correlates with support for the Iraq War and for Bush is further evidence that Fox News is biased. Remember that the anti-Fox POV is trying to show that Fox is biased, not that Fox has failed in its journalistic mission - although there is some evidence supporting that conclusion, that isn't the name of the section, is it?

A Fox critic would think that the response on this particular question only shows that Fox is quite capable of shifting fact from fiction when it suits their nefarious ends. It is possible that PBS/NPR coverage is biased in way that is equal and opposite to Fox, but that is outside the scope of this article. It may even be that PBS/NPR has some failings in its journalistic intergrity, but I highly doubt it, and, besides, that would also be outside the scope of this article. Since this datum supports my POV's position, I fully support the inclusion of it into the bullet point. crazyeddie 08:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We are past whether it should be included or not, it is in. It is the quality and correctness of the PIPA data that is at issue. PBS/NPR bias or failings is not outside the scope of this article. After all, your POV position is that Fox is somehow more biased than other networks, if it is actually less biased that is relevant. You are doing comparison's here and that requires something to compare against. Note, that two of the "misperceptions" are held by only a minority of Fox viewers, so if Fox was intentionally or inadvertently biased, it was not very successful.--Silverback 08:51, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
SB, that last statistical argument was reeeally stretched and it simply doesn't work. you can't judge that intrinsicly, you have to look at it in relation to the norm, otherwise your baseline is purely imaginary and you can say whatever the frack you want. F=ma. if you don't know the mass (the amount of force needed to shift a given perception) or the acceleration (the amount that the perception has been shifted from the norm), how the frack are you supposed to know the force? The force is how you measure how "successful" it was - or, rather, force over distance. you're measuring simply by the distance, which is wrong.
And all those things are, yes, Silverback, outside of the scope of this article. This article reports FOX news. It reports the findings in the PIPA report relevant to fox news in the order of statistical significance (for instance, misperceptions being held only by a minority of fox viewers would not be in there, as it is not statistically significant, which begs the question - why do you mention it?)
And why do you mention things that aren't in the report, that aren't in any report; why do you speculate? I can speculate too, we all can speculate, but we don't put our speculations in the talk page because we consider it inappropriate. The subject matter is what we know. We shall report what we know in proportion to the amount of knowledge we have, and in a straightforward and manner-of-fact way. We shall not put our speculations into the article, nor is there any point in discussing speculations - this is not a blog for discussing the mysterious of the unknown. And definitely not a forum for appplying the unknown as if it had the argumentative power of fact. , or even any argumentative power whatsoever, and doubling that with argument ad nasuem. "Why yes, but it could be.... but it could be..... but it could be.... " Don't insult our intelligence. Kevin Baastalk 18:35, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
You seem to be stating that "misperceptions" that are held by only a minority of Fox viewers should not be included. Did you not notice the latter two are held only by a minority and are included? These two here:
    • 33% of FOX viewers believed that the "US has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" "since the war ended". (Compared with 23% for CBS, 20% for both CNN and NBC, 19% for ABC and 11% for both NPR and PBS)
    • 35% of FOX viewers believed that "the majority of people [in the world] favour the US having gone to war" with Iraq. (Compared with 28% for CBS, 27% for ABC, 24% for CNN, 20% for NBC, 5% for both NPR and PBS)
I am stating that the static percentage of FOX viewers having misperception is not the statistical question. The statistical question is how the probability of having misperceptions is affected by the different factors, irrespective of what the final probabilities are. The final probabilities cannot tell us the multiplicative effects of different factors on that probability. That's whay analysis is for. We are not analyzing statics, we are analyzing dynamics; changes; differentials. You knew that at one point, but you seem to have forgotten when it was rhetorically convenient. Kevin Baastalk 06:04, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
BTW, did you notice in the Appendix B, that being a CBS viewer was a stronger predictor of holding at least one misperception than being a Fox viewer was (odds ratio 2.3 vs 2.1). It is also interesting that on the WMD "misperception", the significance of the networks faded and age and income became significant predictors. It is more difficult to compare odds ratios with these to the networks because they are not binary variables. These types of changes in the independent variables, suggest that combining the different questions is losing information, because, they are measuring different phenomena. Perhaps the differences in the different network showings are due to other differences in the viewers that they attract. It would be interesting to have captured some index of patriotism, and perhaps some index of caring about international opinion (perhaps the opposite of xenophobia?). --Silverback 23:31, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You seem to be of the (twisted) opinion that what counts as a misperception only applies only when there's a clear majority among those who were watching FOX. I don't see why this should be the case. If among FOX viewers we consistently found much greater likelihood (around +30% more likely) then we can safely conclude that FOX was being extremely biased. However this isn't the case, so we can say that FOX was being more biased as compared to the other networks (Mind you I already included CBS in the report), but this bias stops short of being complete nonsense. This clearly doesn't mean FOX wasn't biased. This is such a simple point I wonder why I have to point it out to you.

As for your speculation, I remind you that Wikipedia's articles are not a place for your right-wing POV speculations. And since when did we start talking about patriotism? Oh, I forgot, probably since we started conversing with you. Ethereal 03:53, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We are have a discussion about the strength and explanatory value of independent variables in this study. Part of any discussion of the quality of a regression analysis is whether it includes the appropriate candidate independent variables. Your defensive reaction seems to indicate that you consider "patriotism" a positive quality. I don't, and if it impacts assessment of facts, then it is worse. But if it have explanatory value additional to that of support for Bush and other independent variables that would be an interesting result. Similarly for "caring about international opinion". Most Fox viewers I know, don't give a darn for international opinion. It seems to me likely that, people who don't care about particular facts are less likely to attend to getting them right.
I think we have a difference of mentalities here, you want to blame Fox bias for the misperceptions of its viewers. However, I am of the opinion, that even if Fox is biased, and I suspect they do have a slant, the viewers are responsible for their own misperceptions. They should think critically. To you they are victims, but I hold them responsible. But then I am getting off topic. The issue here is not whether Fox is biased, but whether the PIPA report is evidence of bias.--Silverback 04:28, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree with you, SB, those would be interesting factors to have included in the study. I also agree that having included more factors would have made the study more informative. I could list of a lot of things that I think would be interesting, and I'm sure we'd be in agreement on them. However, they are not in the study, so the point is moot - the best way to understand is by minimum message length; occam's razor. However "wrong" the conclusions that this leads us to may be, it is the best we can do with the information we have - and in that sense, it is "right", to the greatest extent possible.
Critical thinking can help one come to to reaonable conclusions based on the information one has. It cannot provide that information. If one is given false or incomplete information, critical thinking can not flip the coin or fill in the gap. If someone tells me that bob has two apples, and gives one to betty, i will say that bob now has one apple. If bob actually had three apples to begin with, I will be wrong, by no fault of my own, and by no lack of my ability to think critically. In this case, I am not responsible for my "misperception". The point is that one has to take a postmodern perspective, and thereby take flow of information into account. As Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out in his essay "On Truth and Falsity in their Extramoral Sense", thought is not analysis, it is simulation. "The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation;..." Stimuli are canalyzed by the neural network that is the brain, forming a complex "internal" probability model, simulating the "outside" world. The only role that "intuition" are "divine intervention" plays is either by internally-generated "noise" and/or by epistemic propensities resulting from the neuro-chemical and limbic machinic assemblage, formed by "natural selection", or, in the contemporary (emergent) academic perspective, formed by way of the self-organization of dissipative structures. In any case, one cannot know what they don't know, regardless of how hard they try. They can learn - but in any case requires exposure to new information, and they did not know before they learned - which is the time in question. A media source is responsible for that the information that they disseminate. This is the information that one has to process, and even a perfect processor, biological or what-have you - of any physically possible construction - cannot transcend the limitations of the information that it is given. At best, it can produce new information, and by new I mean purely novel, having no relation whatsoever to anything "priorly" existing. Critical thinking has it's limits - it cannot read minds or access the so-called "truth". All it has access to are simulacra. ("Only through forgetfullness can man ever achieve the illusion of possessing a "truth"...", "...: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are;..." -Nietzsche)
The issue here is not whether FOX is biased or whether the report is evidence of bias, the issue is what can be learned from the report, and how to present it in a neutral manner in the article. That is, introducing as little noise as possible, and thereby producing a clean and reliable information channel, providing a "map" to (simulation of) the "territory", or, in modern terms, as much access to "the truth" as possible. This is our responsibility, as it is the responsibility of every media source, provided, that is, that we are to live in this world consciously. Kevin Baastalk 05:50, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
It's strange you happen to quote Nietzsche here. While I do admire Nietzsche's writing style and philosophical thought, I always thought that his concept of "perspectivism" seem to undermine his entire philosophy. For if there is no priviledged bird's eye view of things as they are, how could he lay claim to the veracity of his claim of perspectivism? While I admit that on a careful (or a certain specific reading of Nietzsche), his philosophy does not necessarily lead to nihilism, I consider his thought to be extremely inapplicable to everyday life and considerations. Ethereal 10:13, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
We seem to be talking about two different philosophers here. The Nietzsche that I've read is definitely not a nihilist. If anything, he is the exact opposite: an unconditional life-affirmer. And in any case he clearly states his position in relation to nihilism in his esssay "on nihilism" in his book "the will to power". (In this essay, you might also discover a hidden assumption in your "bird's eye view" scenario.)
I find some ideas in the nietzsche that I have read to be extremely applicable to everyday life. For example: "No stream is large and copious of itself, but is fed and guided by so many currents." Kevin Baastalk 17:58, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)


The anti-Fox thesis of this section is that Fox is biased towards the right. (While the pro-Fox POV is, persumably, that it isn't.) Here's the thesis right here:

"[N]umerous critics claim such slogans belie a network that has a conservative bias and tailors its news to support the Republican Party. Although most critics do not claim that all FOX News reporting is slanted, most allege that bias at FOX News is systemic."

The thesis is that Fox has a systemic, conservative, pro-Republican bias. Not that Fox is more biased than other news sources or even that it has a greater bias towards the right than other news sources. I certainly believe that all of these things are true, and I'm fairly certain, but not 100% postive, that FNC has failed in its journalistic mission. But that's neither here nor there. If you want to show that PBS and/or NPR is biased towards the left, do it in the appropriate article, not here.

<<you want to blame Fox bias for the misperceptions of its viewers.>>

The PIPA report, IMO, doesn't quite give enough evidence for this, but it comes rather close. For example, the likelihood of a Fox viewer having one or more of the misperceptions actually increased the more attention they paid to the news. This would imply that the greater the exposure to FNC, the more likely the viewer is to be deceived. Only imply, of course, not prove or be direct evidence of. More research would be needed to answer that question.

Fortunately, the anti-Fox POV isn't trying to show that Fox's bias is responsible for the misperceptions of its viewers. What the anti-Fox POV is trying to show is that the misperceptions of Fox's viewers (relative to the general population) implies that Fox is biased.

But like Kevin said, the purpose of this discussion is not to determine whether Fox is biased or whether the PIPA report is evidence of bias. The purpose of this discussion is to work out a compromise bulletpoint that summarizes the meat of the PIPA report and how it relates to the alledged bias of FNC. (Neutral being defined, IIRC, as giving a fair and accurate representation of the various POV's views.) Of secondary interest is the need to be concise.

This, of course, assumes that we are, in fact, agreed that we need a bulletpoint for the PIPA report. It seems that Silverback agreed to this while I wasn't looking. (Or was he only insisting on the inclusion of the "no connection" question?) Can we take it that this particular question is closed for good? If not, could we please settle it?

Assuming that we are agreed that we need a bulletpoint of some sort, let's get back to creating a bulletpoint that fairly takes into account both the pro- and anti-Fox POVs, while still being concise as possible. Why don't we each attempt to write a version, and take it from there? We can figure out which version is most salvagable and work from there to one that everybody is equally happy with. Or equally unhappy with, whatever. crazyeddie 08:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You mean someone here is still unhappy with the way the bulletpoint about PIPA is represented? Ethereal 09:15, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Of course, in fact it really shouldn't be included at all because as stated above it fails to support the thesis. Additionally, it is poorly written survey. No clarifying questions (for example the obvious question which would be very enlightening would be: What do you consider to be WMD? 1) Shells that have traces of biological or chemical agent, 2) storehouses of biological/chemical weapons, etc. If those that consider shells as WMD vote overwelmingly that WMD was found in Iraq they would be correct - and you could see who the real misperceived are because if they say storehouses and it was found - that is clearly a misperception.
As I have stated before - this very discussion (above) supports the thesis that the report is not grounded enough to be included in a factual article Trödel|talk 21:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The shells were not found until after the PIPA surveys so that is not a legit criticism of the survey, however, I think you understate the evidence when you state that traces of a chemical agent was found. While technically that was true, the shells were full fledge binary agent shells, which if properly used so that the two agents were combined, would have yielded far more than trace amounts. We are indeed fortunate that these did not fall into knowledgable hands. Whatever the evidentiary status was at the time of the surveys, those misperceptions have been turned into perceptions now. --Silverback 22:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Weapons of Mass Destruction, such as the complete lack of "far more than trace amounts", have been found in Iraq. I also have some complete lack of "far more than trace amounts" here, on my computer desk. Perhaps I should be bombed? Kevin Baastalk 08:55, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
It is possible that those shells could, if the right agents were available, and knowledgable hands, with motivation and opportunity, be used to create WMDs. But were they? No. Were WMDs created? No. No. They were not. To say that in certain circumstances it would be possible for WMDs to be created is completely different than saying that WMDs were in fact created, possesed. In certain circumstances I could knock you on the side of the head and call you silly, but that is not the case - to say that I have done so would be - and I trust you won't dispute this - a misperception. Kevin Baastalk 09:04, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
The shells were full fledged WMDs. There was a membrane separating the binary agents that had to be broken so the agents could mix, and the shell was expected to spin during flight to thoroughly mix the agents. Yes, they were WMD. --Silverback 09:52, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No they were not. Could they, in their present form, be used as a weapon of mass destruction? No. That would require the proper amount of chemical agents being in the shells, just as a nuclear shell would require sufficient uranium and some pretty sophisticated technology, if it were to be used in constructing a WMD. You can tell me as much as you want about spinning and mixing and the whole physics behind the kind of weapon that this shell could be used, along with other materials, to construct. But you can't coax my imagination into runing away with itself and believing that said weapon has been constructed from complete lack of sufficient parts to construct said weapons, and complete lack of them being put together. Kevin Baastalk 17:58, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
Can't you guys see that including a report that is subject to discussion to determine its meaning ⇒ it is not factual enough to include in an encyclopedic article. It could be misleading and it undermines the argument that FOX is biased because the survey itself is disputed. Trödel|talk 19:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Like Silverback said, the shells were not found until after the survey. Even if the shells were WMDs, at the time "The US has found WMDs in Iraq" was a misperception. AFAICT, the survey has no factual flaws. The only question is how the survey and report relate to FNC and its aledged bias. So moving along... crazyeddie 21:11, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, interpreting the first statement as a misperception is also a factual flaw, "US has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization". The medical treatment and sanctuary for al Zarqawi is enough to qualify as "working closely". This has already been discussed.--Silverback 22:38, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

For goodness's sake, Silverback and Trodel, the current revision of the article with regard to the PIPA report already contains the questions directly quoted from the actual questionaire given out to the poll respondents. So, whatever possible interpretation you could have assigned the questions can also be given to the bulletpoints which is already included within the article. It is not our duty to determine what exactly the respondents have had in mind when they answered as they did. Isn't a direct copy-and-paste from the poll question sufficient enough? Ethereal 01:49, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PIPA and Fox's alleged bias

The PIPA report was investigating three misperceptions that they believed were leading to support for the Iraq War, and why people were harboring them. They discovered that the most significant correlations were 1) support for the Iraq War, 2) intention to vote for Bush in the upcoming '04 elections, 3) what source the respondant was using for their primary source of news, 4) intention to vote for a Democratic candidate in the upcoming elections. It could be argued that, except for number 3, those correlations were a result of having the given misperceptions. At any rate, we are only worried about number 3.

Among the various news sources, Fox was the strongest predictor for having one or more of the misperceptions, as well as being the strongest predictor for each individual misperception. Even after accounting for the intention to vote for Bush or a Democratic candidate, party membership, as well as a host of other variables, Fox viewers were still more likely to hold these misperceptions. In addition, Fox viewers were the least likely to have a misperception that correlated with lack of support for the war - That there was "no connection" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Also, Fox viewers came in second (but still significantly above the overall average) for two related views that, while not disproven, were widely believed to be false in the intelligence community.

So far, all this shows correlation, not causation. The causual relationship could go either way. It could be that watching Fox tends to cause people to hold the given misperceptions, or it could be that holding these misperceptions tends to cause people to watch Fox, or it could be that some third factor, not accounted for in the analysis, was causing both effects. The correlation is cause for suspicion, but it isn't exactly proof.

But add in this though: Among Fox viewers, those who very closely payed attention to the news were more likely, not less, than those who payed no attention to the news to hold the given misperceptions. This would seem to indicate that greater exposure to Fox coverage caused viewers to be more likely to hold the give misperceptions. It might be that having the misperceptions might cause Fox viewers to pay more attention to the news, but that's stretching things a bit, especially since the same effect wasn't seen with other news sources. (Aside from Fox, print media, and CNN, there was no correlation between the amount of attention payed to the news and holding the given misperceptions. The correlation was strongest with Fox. There was a slight tendency of having a lower rate of misperceptions with greater attention among print media readers, and a very slight tendency in the same direction with CNN viewers.)

The facts of the survey and of the report are not in dispute, only its interpertation. Which just means that we need to report both side's of the dispute interpertations, in accordance with the NPOV policy, not that the bulletpoint is in need of removal. crazyeddie 21:11, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have conceded that there is not a concensus to remove the section; lets just keep it as concise as possible. Trödel|talk 21:50, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is everybody agreed? crazyeddie 22:07, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You appear to be substantially misunderstanding the study, you don't have the correlations right in your first paragraph, didn't seem much point in reading beyond that.--Silverback 22:40, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)
Keep it, but don't make it two pages long like it used to be. Do a general summary and move on...put a link @ the end. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 23:06, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
On a related subject, Iraq occupation mistakes is (quite hastily) put up for deletion - people can comment there. -==SV 02:14, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid we're going to have to make it a bit longer than the present version. We tried to make it concise last time, maybe we went too far. We'll trying to keep it as short as possible, we also have to be accurate. That's assuming we're keeping it. Silverback, in or out? crazyeddie 02:21, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea to make too long. Sooner or later, someone will say it ought to be removed because it's too long. And in any case, Silverback, I did compromise on one hidden aspect: on whether the fact that the regression analysis took into account Bush supporters of FOX viewers. The current revision (on reading) leaves open the possibility that Bush supporters among FOX viewers may account for the lopsided tendency of FOX viewers to misperceive, but as PIPA has said, that itself reflects a misreading of the study. I have compromised with you by not including that fact. Apart from that, I have also compromised on the following:

  • Quoted the poll questions directly from the questionnaire instead of summarising it (in your response to your charge that the questions were ambiguous)
  • Included the percentages for FOX news and all other networks.
  • Included the rather irrelevant point of CBS viewers slightly higher tendency to misperceive as compared to FOX viewers (CBS was less significant than FOX overall, so that part should have been excluded, anyway that one was not particularly relevant to FOX news, it was more for CBS news)
  • Went to the extent of searching for a peer-reviewed version of the report. (The fact that the other version was reported in the news was good enough for inclusion)
  • Contacted PIPA on your claims AND got some of the data in response to YOUR objection (yours was more of an argument from ignorance)

I think the others can see why I'm sick of this. I'll tolerate no attempts to remove the PIPA report, unless a sufficiently good reason can be given. For that reason to be sufficiently good, I am going to practise the very same tough standards Silverback has applied for the inclusion of the PIPA report in its current revision. Ethereal 03:47, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think you are miss interpreting what is going on here. I have accepted our current compromise. Crazyeddie just appears to be trying to reopen the topic and I see no reason to let him get away with inaccuracies. If new points get added to the current version, then the compromise may have to be revisited.--Silverback 04:04, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
If he is misinterpreting what is going on here, he isn't alone. Our current "compromise" is only a stopgap solution, which I'm willing to tolerate only as a temporary measure. Silverback apparently found the prior version so objectionable that he removed it from the article and some time after it had been restored, he moved it to a seperate section altogether. I think - and I believe that a consensus would agree with me - that a fresh compromise version needs to be worked out. But there is no point in doing that unless there is a clear consensus for its inclusion. Not once have I heard Silverback concede that there is a consensus on that point.
Just out of curiosity, Silverback, if you weren't arguing for the removal of the bulletpoint, what was the point of the endless amounts of verbiage of the past week? Trying to convert the heathen? crazyeddie 08:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It was the continuation of a discussion of the PIPA report based on a new appendix Ethereal had obtained from PIPA. We had compromised some time ago. The PIPA report was moved into the bias section, and all percentages were added. That appears to be a version that lets the facts speak for themselves without burdening the reader with odds-ratios, etc.--Silverback 08:17, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
Where is the discovery that fox was the only station were mispercpetions increased with increased attention to the reports? Is that near the beginning (high statistical significance)? If it is of sufficient statistical significance, in shoudl be mentioned in the article. It's not redundant with the other things from the report mentioned in the article, rather, it's quite independant, and it's certainly interesting. Kevin Baastalk 04:54, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

side-note: other things in report

silverback had an interesting question earlier, about how caring about world opinion affected misperceptions and/or support for the war.

the survey apparently included misperceptions about world opinion. it is pretentious to say that one :"cares" about world opnion if they don't even care enough about it to find out what it is. by this logic, it seems that misperceptions about world opninion would be a good indicator of how important it is to people.

and support for the war is in the survey, too. Kevin Baastalk 21:00, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

Unless I mispoke one of the times, I have made the case several times, that Fox viewers were probably less likely to care about world opinion and so less likely to bother to get it right, than someone who does care, despite how accurate the coverage would be. Republicans often mock democrats for their flip-flopping, their holding their fingers to the political wind, and their ruling by the polls.--Silverback 07:10, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Well my logic is somewhat different, i wouldn't say that it's neccessarily correlated with fox viewers, (and the survey doesn't support that hypothesis). i'd say that caring/not caring is correlated with getting it right or not. I'd also say that this is correlated with support for the war, and that it's correlated with political attitude. (and to take it a step furter: not through intermediate variables) but i hypothesis that it has negligble, at best, correlation to fox, when those factors are compensated for.

I think you're making some generalizations there. Firstly, I am only familiar with Kerry being mocked for flip-flopping, which in actually he hasn't done. His voting record is very consistent. For example, he got an a+ from the league of conservation voters. if you look at other public interest groups who objectively rate voting patterns, you'll see that he rarely gets anything near a C, but more often an A or an F, depending on the nature of the interest group. Perhaps people who call or called kerry a flip-flopper are either just being a reapeter (i think this is most likely) or don't understand what to them would be "subtleties" in his elocution. And in any case, another part of Bush's negative campaign against kerry was calling him a crazy liberal, the most extreme-left in the senate (in actuality, kuccinich is generally considered the most left, and fiengold and boxer are considered the most progressive) - and one must ask, how can that be, if he's a flip-flopper? Wouldn't that imply that his views are very predictable (whatever "left" is), and thus very consistent? But that's enough with that absurdity.

the principles of democrats are very consistent, and their conviction and passion for them very strong. They're very basic, too:

  • Pro-environment. science, not religion, governs environmental policy (duh). environment comes before economy, as economy depends on environment.
  • Pro-education. "Out progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education; the human mind is our fundamental resource." - John F. Kennedy
  • Pro-choice/Women's rights. This does not mean pro-abortion. This means that a women has the right to choose what she wants to do with her body. I've helped 15 yrs olds who were raped and got pregnant and couldn't afford this, with their trauma. i know too many people who i care about deeply that been raped and i've seen the psychological damage and i get really frickin' angry when someone disrespects another person's body. so that's pretty personal to me. they should have that first choice, and if they get that taken away from them by some horny a$$hole who doesn't give a sh&t about them or what they may be doing to their life and their pursuit of happiness, they d*mn well should have the second. they did not choose to get raped, and they very well did not choose the consequences. this is all that can be done to give that choice back. it still falls well short. well short - they should also have a good nights sleep back - without insomnia, nightmares, trust, normal relationships, etc. none of us believe that people should just go around aborting. in most cases it's wrong. but in some cases, it really is imperative. the world is just that cruel, believe it or not. and we'd like that option to be available in those few cases. which brings me to
  • habeus corpus - old latin law: "you have the body". 90% of the law is property. the most fundamental property a person has is their own body. By the fact that they, and not any institution, own their body, they have the right to due process, protection from wrongfull imprisonment or unnecessary detainment, fair and speedy trial, to not be tortured (human rights) etc. This rights are intrinsic and fundamental. The scum of the earth still have these rights.
  • equal rights - and the rights apply equally to all persons, regardless of color or creed, or what-have-you, including, first and foremost, the right to vote for representatives. this should be equitable. This does not mean that there simply shouldn't be any effort to make it not so - this means that there should be effort to make it so.
  • progressive taxation - welcome to the post-medieval world.
  • science - welcome to the post-medieval world.
  • religious freedom, separation of church and state - welcome to the post-medieval world.
  • accountability in government - responsibility is proportional to power.
  • cooperation, anti-xenophobia, lack of arrogance or hubris - this aligns with equal rights, and applies both domestically and internationally ("no stream is large and copiuos of itself")
  • zero-population growth - this aligns w/science, environment, economy, and abortion is aligned with it. let's keep the human race alive, eh?
  • military & international policy - "peace cannot be mantained by force, it can only be achieved through understanding" -albert einstein, from sun tzu's art of war, first rule of war: the best way to win is without fighting. second rule: deal with large problems when they are small. prevent conflict instead of elevating it. pick options with more benefits than risks. deal with education, health, and socio-cultural issues, and wars will not begin. understanding before aggression. this also aligns with cooperation and equal rights.
  • seriousness and professionalism: respect for critical thinking, and disgust for personal attacks (i.e. anti-Tom Delay) also aligns with cooperation. the importance of this does not come from the desire for an air of pompeity or any kind of pretention - the importance comes from not wanting people to get raped, wanting people to have nutrition, opportunities, and decent lives. we don't take that lightly. we don't whine and fuss and mock and insult, and we don't have personal competitions, because it is not a game. granted, we need a laugh here and there, to relieve the stress.
  • personal liberty: "life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness" isn't just a motto. each person has the right to their own existence, sought and defined according to their own being., and that's another thing
  • not enforcing one's will or beliefs upon another: this aligns with cooperation, religious freedom, equal rights, habeaus corpus. who needs a copy of one's self, anyways? that's a little redundant. what's more valuable is something that you don't have, new knowledge or a new way of thinking and seeing, to add to one's own. as well, one can educate people, but the key word here is "force" - do not force, respect. this aligns with respect for knowledge; science (science aligns with cooperation)

Everything pretty much lines up. i'm sure i can expand, but i think i get the idea across. Kevin Baastalk 15:38, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

holding fingers to the political wind? is that a weather analogy? if so, i don't see how that's a bad thing. if there's a storm, i'm staying inside, if it's going to rain, i'm not going to work on the roof. - this kind of things are good to know, to help determine the best course of action. do in interpret this correctly?

ruling by the polls - what? Do you mean that they are more likely to consider differing opinions? this would align with lots of things in those bulletpoints above. Kevin Baastalk 15:38, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

I think Clinton was the one who was famous for always checking the polls, even when an election wasn't approaching. I don't recall Kerry being called the most liberal in the Senate, he may well have been called that, I remember him being called the most liberal Senator from Massachusetts. I recall his apologia for the alleged flip-flops, but they seemed after the fact. At the time of each of the flip-flops, such as on Iraq, he was facing different political pressures. First he was looking ahead to running for office, then he was facing pressure from competition for the Democratic base from Dean and Kucinich, and then when he had the nominate he had to run to the center again. His more centrist rhetoric when running towards the center of course, contrasted with his Senate voting record, so while his "principles" remained the same, he was either running from them or spinning them. Of course, there is always the fear in the back of peoples minds that a candidate will revert from what he is saying to get elected, to his true beliefs. 9/11 and the security situation had Kerry backpedaling quite a bit from his anti-war and anti-intelligence record, however, sincere he current positions were, there would still be doubt. Bush was a known quantity. Of course they are all hypocrites in both parties, they are for "freedom" or "choice", except where they are not, for instance, drugs.--Silverback 18:19, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

And none of this has anything to do with the topic at hand. If you wish to continue this conversation, please do it at your own personal talk pages. Some of us would like to get some work done... crazyeddie 20:36, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

opps. right. sorry. Kevin Baastalk 21:43, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

Level of Attention to News

On my hard copy, the "level of attention to news" factor was mentioned on pages 585-586 and page 590. (I'm working with a printed out hardcopy, so I'm afraid I can't give you what PDF page number these are on.) Here's the relevant passages verbatim (unless some typos snuck in - feel free to read the original, this is just for y'all's convenience). crazyeddie 19:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

From page 585-586:

"Strikingly, overall, there was no relation between the reported level of attention to the news and the frequency of misperceptions. In the case of those who primarily watched Fox, greater attention to news modestly increased the likelihood of misperceptions. Only in the case of those who primarily got their news from print did misperceptions decrease with lower levels of attention, though in some cases this occured for CNN viewers as well.
"The most robust effects were found among those who primarily got their news from Fox. Among those who did not follow the news at all, 42 percent had the misperception that evidence of close links to al Qaeda has been found, rising progressively at higher levels of attention to 80 percent among those who followed the news very closely. For the perception that WMD have been found, those who watched very closely had the highest rate of misperception at 44 percent, while the other levels of attention were lower, though they did not form a clear pattern (not at all, 34 percent; not very, 24 percent; somewhat, 32 percent). Among those who did not follow the news at all, 22 percent believed that world public opinion favored the war, jumping to 34 percent and 32 percent amon those who followed the news not very and somewhat closely, respectively, and then jumping even higher to 48 percent among those who followed the news very closely."

From page 590:

"Level of attention to news was not a significant factor overall, with the exception of those who primarily got their news from Fox. This is consistent with the finding that Fox viewers were more likely to misperceive the more closely they followed events in Iraq. Multiplicative variables were derived for each network by multiplying attention to news by each network dummy variable. A multivariate analysis was performed on misperceptions in which each new combined network-attention level variable was added to the previous model. The results show that Fox viewers are the only ones to be significantly more likely to misperceive with higher levels of attention to news."
Immediately following the short para on "effects of variation in audience", which immediately follows the info in the article right now. I think it is significant enough to put in the article. Kevin Baastalk 20:45, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)
Perhaps, but they only state that it is statistically significant, they don't say where it ranks in significance. The significance may only be because Fox had more viewers not a higher odds/ratio. If you look at the appendix on other issues, (unfortunately these results are not included), you will see that on some PBS/NPR or CBS are better predictors although Fox is has more statistical significance in explaining the data, simply because with more viewers, Fox could explain more data. Using "attention to news", also points to another logical flaw in the study, since only one response could be given to the question of news source. It is arguable that, those who pay more attention to news, are also more likely to watch more than one source, even if they pick Fox as their top selection. Hmmm, I wonder if the opposite is true, that those who pay the most attention to the news prefer Fox? I can see a new slogan developing here. --Silverback 07:06, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it isn't clear how it ranks in significance. But it is clear that it is significant. In the first quote, PIPA describes it like this: "In the case of those who primarily watched Fox, greater attention to news modestly increased the likelihood of misperceptions." In other words, the effect isn't huge, but it is present. I believe that this bit is important enough to warrant inclusion in the bulletpoint. Does anybody object? crazyeddie 17:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the PIPA report is already fairly represented, there were other aspects of the report, I wanted to bring in as well. I think adding this attention aspect would disturb the balance.--Silverback 18:23, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
I think it would be in pursuance of a proportional representation of the report. That is, I think it would make it more balanced. (remember, we are not assuming the conclusion via the grey fallacy) Kevin Baastalk 18:47, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

If you wish to make other changes or additions to the bulletpoint, we can discuss them at a later time. I have other changes I would like to propose myself. But let's focus on one thing at a time and not get sidetracked. Do you have any objections to the inclusion of this bit on its own merits? Does anybody else have any objections to its inclusion? Does anybody want to express support for its inclusion? Is anybody undecided? crazyeddie 20:34, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I support it in very compressed bullet form, smaller than what's currently there from the report, if possible (in keeping in proportion w/significance). Kevin Baastalk 21:46, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't exactly proposing adding three paragraphs to the article. I was thinking more along the lines of a single sentence. We can figure out the exact form after we have determined that there is consensus for its inclusion. I have no wish to rehash this discussion a week from now - while I don't expect any compromise language to be final, I would like to have about three months of peace and quiet before somebody broaches editing the PIPA bulletpoint again. That's assuming that we eventually come to a true compromise. This current session has lasted since at least March, and we still have a lot of ground to cover before I'm sastisfied, one way or the other.

Does anybody have any objections to this particular sub-point? Speak now or temporarily hold your peace! crazyeddie 02:26, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, doesn't look like anybody has any objections, or if they do, they're keeping mum about it. How's this look?

  • A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, in the Winter 2003-2004 issue of Political Science Quarterly, reported that viewers of the Fox Network local affiliates or Fox News were more likely than viewers of other news networks to hold three views which the authors labeled as misperceptions:[10] (PDF),
    • 67% of FOX viewers believed that the "US has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization" (Compared with 56% for CBS, 49% for NBC, 48% for CNN, 45% for ABC, 16% for both NPR and PBS). However, the belief that "Iraq was directly involved in September 11" was held by 33% of CBS viewers and only 24% of FOX viewers.
    • 33% of FOX viewers believed that the "US has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" "since the war ended". (Compared with 23% for CBS, 20% for both CNN and NBC, 19% for ABC and 11% for both NPR and PBS)
    • 35% of FOX viewers believed that "the majority of people [in the world] favour the US having gone to war" with Iraq. (Compared with 28% for CBS, 27% for ABC, 24% for CNN, 20% for NBC, 5% for both NPR and PBS)
Fox viewers were unique in that those who paid greater attention to news were moderately more likely to have these misperceptions than those who paid less or no attention to news.

Since this bulletpoint is already one of the longer ones in this section, I think we ought to move it to last. Any comments on this idea or on the proposed language? crazyeddie 22:12, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since there doesn't seem to be any objections, I'll go ahead and make the proposed changes. I have other proposals to make, but I'll wait and see if there are any screams over this one first. crazyeddie 18:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

inappropriate language?

Re: Photocopied memos (http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=8147&fcategory_desc=Fox%20News,%2024hr%20Republican%20Network) from FOX News executive John Moody instructing the network's on-air anchors and reporters on using positive language when discussing anti-abortion viewpoints, the Iraq war, and tax cuts; as well as requesting that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal be put in context with the other violence in the area.

I'm not an extremist on either side of the issue, but I think it's only fair to change this to 'pro-life.'

The term "pro-life" is POV and implies that the opposite side in the argument are "pro-death". - Mark 06:45, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Is this anti-abortion or pro-prohibition of abortion? Being anti-abortion and anti-prohibition of abortion is a conceivable libertarian position. If this part becomes a direct quote, it would be acceptable to use the original words without interpretation (and we wouldn't have to argue about it). Tim Ivorson 08:44, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Plus it is probably inaccurate - I doubt the PTB at Fox are pushing for doing away with the death penalty. What was the exact language used in the source and/or the memos? crazyeddie 22:15, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, did some searching for "abortion" in the link:

"Let's spend a good deal of time on the battle over judicial nominations, which the President will address this morning. Nominees who both sides admit are qualified are being held up because of their POSSIBLE, not demonstrated, views on one issue -- abortion. This should be a trademark issue for FNC today and in the days to come."
"The National Education Association -- the NEA -- is supposedly neutral on the topic of abortion. Why then is it a co sponsor of Saturday's pro choice march in DC. Herridge has lives."
"John Kerry has positioned himself squarely on the fight over abortion. He attends a pro-choice rally in DC, then addresses newspaper editors. We'll take the latter live."

I also searched for "pro-life" and didn't come up with anything. I think anti-abortion is an accurate way to put it. crazyeddie 22:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PIPA editing

Kevin, Silverback, rather than having a revert war, perhaps you should work things out in the talk page? crazyeddie 16:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I cited my a policy in the edit summary, and apparently i had to clear it up, as you can see from the edit summaries. Specifically, I was citing the following, from Wikipedia:Informative:

By "interesting", we don't mean "interesting to everyone", or "interesting to you". Rather, we seek information that is potentially interesting to, at least, some small but significant proportion of the world's population. For example:

  • The date of the Battle of Hastings is interesting to people interested in 11th century history
  • The time that King Harold was killed in said battle is interesting to slightly obsessed historians of the Norman Conquest
  • The general diet of King Harold, as opposed to his contemporaries, is interesting to historians of 11th century nutrition.
  • The time that King Harold had breakfast 183 days prior to said battle is interesting to no-one, even if King Harold had kept a meticulous diary which has been preserved to the present day.
    • However, the diary itself would be both actionable and interesting to certain nutritionists and many historians.

If someone says they find something interesting, then they probably do, but this is not an excuse to include idiosyncratic information that really is found interesting only by this one person.

One type of uninteresting information is that which is obvious. Note that what is obvious to one person may not be obvious to someone else. However, sometimes things really are too obvious for words, and we'd rather live without them. For example:

One way to tell if something is too obvious is to ask if it is distinguished -- that is, does it set apart the subject of the article from other entities of the same general category? Every human being breathes; and all cities contain houses, flats, streets, and shops -- thus, these facts do not distinguish Ms. Thatcher or Worcester.

Specifically, I cited this section in arguing that the fact that misperceptions increased with attention to FOX news is interesting, while the fact that there are other factors which had a larger affect on misperceptions is obvious. Therefore the former should be included, while the latter should not. I am under the impression that we have reached agreement on this matter, given that he has not reverted since i clarified the citation. Kevin Baastalk 22:27, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)

I agree with Kevin on this. We are here specifically to present information within the report specifically related to FOX news only, not the report in its entirety. Those who doubt the information presented can download and read the report themselves. Ethereal 04:15, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Careful there Ethereal! I do have other bits of information I would like to put into this bulletpoint, I would rather not be hoisted on my own petard. But I do think the level of information that Silverback was inserting was a bit overboard. I also find it dishearting that he decided to engage in a minor revert war rather than air his objections on the talk page. Hopefully he has finished reverting for now. But it is possible that he has simply gone offline for the day.

Does anybody have any objections to the "level of attention" language as it stands (as of Kevin's last revert)? crazyeddie 08:50, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../f/o/x/Talk%7EFox_News_Channel_Archive_8_160b.html"