Today’s thoughts come again from a column by Leonard Pitts who shares some numbers that some of you might not believe and/or like. We are talking about America’s cable news networks – Fox News and CNN in particular as reported by the Pew Research Center and PolitiFact, which is a Pulitzer prize-winning group.
The study is about who might be America’s least trusted news sources. Pew lists Rush Limbaugh’s show as the least trustworthy source with a 40% not trusted rate. Fox News is a close second at 37%.
But, while both Rush and Fox aren’t highly trusted they are certainly popular. Limbaugh’s show is the highest-rated show on radio and Fox News is the most-watched cable news network!
This topic gets pretty complicated when you learn Pew says CNN, our President’s favorite – NOT, is the most trusted news source at 54% positive. But, even though American’s think CNN can be trusted we evidently don’t like watching it as it ratings are only a fraction of Fox’s. CNN has even been laying people off recently.
PolitiFact reinforces who is trusted and who is not with these interesting findings. The question wasn’t perfect but examined the “truthfulness of broadcast pundits?”
Over 60% of Fox’s pundit’s statements were “found to be some flavor of false.” while CNN’s were just 22% less than accurate.
Let me interject here: If KVOE ever reached 2% false let alone 22% we’d be run out of Emporia! Obviously we carry network news and Talk Shows where announcers are likely not accurate all the time, but our local reporters better be correct.
Finally, Nielson was asked to find out in times of crisis where do people turn for their news and reported among other things that when 9-11 occurred CNN’s audience increased by 800%. “No other network came close.”
It’s a free country and we have a bunch of choices for where we get our news.
Maybe that old saying about “believing none of what you hear and half of what you see,” makes sense again?
One request! Please remember I’m just repeating today what others wrote.
I’m Steve Sauder and “There’s Something to Think About.”
