Does the percentage of people educated on a subject show if a news station is credible?

Question

Bush has admitted that there were no WMDs:
In a speech before the World Affairs Council of Charlotte, NC, on April 7, 2006, President Bush stated that he "fully understood that the intelligence was wrong, and [he was] just as disappointed as everybody else" when U.S. troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search#Stockpiles_weren.27t_created_post-1991

So it is confirmed that there were no WMDs in Iraq that were the reason we went to war. Weather Bush knew that or not is up for dabate. But if this is the truth, then what do these satatistics say?

Media source, Respondents believing evidence of WMD had been found in Iraq since the war ended
Fox 33%
CBS 23%
NBC 20%
CNN 20%
ABC 19%
Print media 17%
PBS-NPR 11%

Do you think that this says anything about the credability of these new stations? Is Fow News less accurate in their reporting then PBS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wmd#Media_coverage_of_WMD

Answer 1

I think it has a lot to do with the bias that is in the media. Fox typically skews right. In my opinion NPR/PBS is the least biased of all. I listen, almost exclusively to NPR and find myself agreeing with Republicans from time to time (horrors) and getting mad at Democrats (not too surprising, actually). I know that I have heard several stories on NPR about the fact that no WMDs were found and my understanding is that a lot of networks (even those we are told skew left) simply dropped it as a story and don't address it, or merely mention it and don't do in depth reporting on it.
I sincerely doubt that Fox is going around saying that WMDs have been found, but that their early reporting and then non-reporting affected the opinion of their viewership. Keep in mind that NPR/PBS and to a lesser degree print media don't have to cater to advertisers who may or may not influence the quality/nature of their reporting. They can afford to be unbiased.

Answer 2

Everybody has heard Fox news's slogan "Fair and Balanced" but everybody knows that Fox is owned by News Corp which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch who is well known for being somewhat of a neo conservative.

Also if you look at the news personalities on FOX news most of them obviously pander to the rightwing-conservative point of view. For example : Bill oRiley, Anne Coulter, Chris Wallace, michelle Malkin and Sean hannity.

So pretty much all media is biased which ever way you look at it.

But then again the main reason Fox cable news network was invented was to balance out the other media heavyweights that lean to a more liebral biased such as CBS, MSNBC and CNN. In the 1996 election almost 89% of journalists said that they voted for Clinton.

Answer 3

news media is as accurate as their last story - and there are definate differences between Fox and PBS