David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale university, respectively, paid 304 regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to instead watch up to seven hours of CNN a week during the month of September 2020....
By the end of September, the CNN watchers were less likely to agree that: “It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin” and less likely to believe that: “If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists”, when compared with their peers who continued watching Fox News... In addition the CNN viewers were 13 points less likely than the Fox News viewers to agree that: “If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”...
But once it was over, and the $15 an hour was taken away, “viewers returned to watching Fox News”, Kalla said....
Maybe if there were a news channel that gave the news straight and didn't lean either way, after exposure to it, people would stay with it, rather than return to the channel that tracked their political inclination. The subjects of this study may have moderated some of their more extreme views, but I presume they were also continually irritated by the liberal bias of CNN. Were they surveyed about that?
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I don't believe them. Maybe the respondents just told them what they wanted hear. There is no way, anybody who watches Fox would trust the lies that CNN has told since Obama was ordained their Messiah. No WAY. (Just like I would not believe somebody on the left would change THEIR minds.)
They didn't do it the other way round? I'd be very interested to see that. Given my own biases over which set of viewers is the most in their bubble, I'd bet that the CNN viewers would be enormously changed by watching Fox for a month. They'd get exposed to a set of viewpoints that they never see at all.
Brian Stelter's personal magnetism is just that hard to resist ...
AVI blogged about this here. His take
The study paid regular Fox viewers to watch CNN for 7 days, then asked questions. They tried to get funding to do the same with regular CNN viewers (who they openly stated they thought would be as bad or worse) but were unable to. What they found - oversimplified - was that it didn't change their votes, but it did affect their willingness to call their own side to account. Being exposed to another POV made you more willing to call the worst of your own side out.
I'm not sure why the discrepancy in the description of the study (view for 7 days vs view 7 hours a week during a month) as it appears to be the same study. He includes a link to a Twitter thread by one of the authors (Broockman), not a news report.
A straight news channel would get no viewers. Even Althouse relies on clickbait.
Seems odd the researchers didn't also experiment with viewers going the opposite way.
Just kidding. It doesn't seem odd at all.
it's interesting that they didn't do a group the other way
Pay CNN viewers to watch Fox instead.. What would have happened THEN
my guess is: NOTHING
You can lead a Whore to Culture, but you can't make her think
They have to pay people to watch CNN.
As expected, this study confirms that FOX News viewers are open minded and able to change their opinion when exposed to new information. I wonder what the result would be if dedicated CNN viewers were paid to watch FOX. (Of course, it might be hard to find enough study subjects if they try to screen out the people who are already heavy hate-watchers of FOX.)
Can maybe U Chicago and Hillsdale run a similar study with the roles reversed?
In addition, no one has even remotely attempted a control. Our unrequited desire for even handed news and commentary slogs forward through the 21st century. The business model says that stuff doesn't work any more.
If you think prayer helps, join me.
Yet another "rigged" study. They asked the people "Is it an over-reaction to go out and protest" (the death of George Floyd). not "Is it an over-reaction to vandalize shops and burn down a police station," which is what happened.
" But the study itself is a study in bias. The researchers at Berkeley and Yale only subjected Fox viewers to this type of re-educational viewing; they paid Fox viewers to watch CNN but did not do the opposite to see how CNN viewers changed their views after being exposed to Fox. Moreover, the study assumed as fact what would be viewed as a contested viewpoint. For example, they assert that “Fox News largely did not inform viewers of Trump’s failure to protect the U.S. from the COVID-19 outbreak, whereas CNN extensively did so. This is concerning for democratic accountability.” -Jonathan Turley https://jonathanturley.org/2022/04/11/the-reeducation-of-america-former-president-obama-calls-on-our-better-angels-to-change-voter-viewpoints/
“If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”
Notice the phrasing. BLM activists were obviously more likely to be active when Trump was president. The organization wanted Trump out so they organized protests and riots. The question should have been whether crime would go up if Biden were elected -- whether a Democrat victory would embolden criminals.
In public opinion polls people are often just voting for their side or things that sound like what their side wants and not actually considering the questions and what they imply. In surveys and news stories the tendency is to present opposing opinions as easily refutable caricatures and then assume that one has discredited the other side. Don't be taken in by the charade.
My husband, who is made of sterner stuff than I, read the story about this study the other day. He said it made him laugh hysterically: the conclusion they reached was that because people who were paid to watch CNN and to avoid Fox News changed their opinions more closely to match those of the "researchers," CNN must be "real news" and Fox must be"fake news." "Research" must mean something very different these days from what it used to mean.
How about doing one the other way - getting CNN regular viewers to watch Fox.
Limbaugh would regularly comment that lefties took their opinion of his show from what other lefties said about his show. That is, not from direct experience. But, he claimed, when a lefty listened to his show with an open mind, opinions changed.
$15/hr, the tacit minimum wage
Wendybar has the standard predictable response of a cult member. I hear Dr. Oz has one cool trick to melt brain fat instantaneously.
I'd rather get paid to have pointy sticks shoved in my eyes than have to watch CNN for 7 hours a week. Or a month. I've tried. I cannot make it more than a minute before I'm commenting on their opinions and delivery. I still try to watch that network when I need a change. But it's just so bad. They start with bad premises when delivering the news and it goes down from there. Honestly, I do find the Fox Report with Brett Baier at 6 EDT to be much more objective than any of the others.
Although I've taken to watching BBC and going online to watching news from other European sources to get other points of view. It was interesting watching socialists gleefully cheer on Macron's first place in France's election shown on BBC yesterday. And how they always use the word 'far' just before 'right' when talking about virtually anyone on the conservative side.
It's not just done here. You're either an approved smiley Socialist, or you're an extreme far-right fascistic Conservative. Macron is being portrayed as the Centrist we all yearn for. (where have I heard that before?).
“It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin”
They didn't simply protest in Kenosha, they rioted. Lefties seem to conflate the two.
"I don't believe them. Maybe the respondents just told them what they wanted hear. There is no way, anybody who watches Fox would trust the lies that CNN has told since Obama was ordained their Messiah. No WAY. (Just like I would not believe somebody on the left would change THEIR minds.)"
Face it...anyone who relies on either FOX or CNN as their primary purveyor of news is a low-information voter.
This just proves the power of TV to brainwash so many people. Instead of trying to prove that CNN is the truth (a risible claim), why not research ways to teach people to consume the “news” to get closer to the facts so a person can make up his/her mind?
They paid these people to watch CNN...
They tried to get funding to do the same with regular CNN viewers.. but were unable to.
SO, the questions are: WHO provided funding for this? WHY didn't They fund the other way?
Was it CNN, that funded this? Or was it George Soros? WHO WAS IT?
Why’d they do Fox viewers rather than CNN viewers? Obviously because their underlying bias is that Fox viewers are dumber, more susceptible to brainwashing. I read a Quillette article yesterday about tribalism and guess what? All their worst examples were of right wing tribalism.
The left doesn’t see their own bias. It’s remarkable, actually. All the righties I know recognize all media, Fox included, is in the brainwashing business but lefties really think it’s just Fox doing it. And even stupider, they don’t realize where Fox is on the ideological spectrum. They think it’s hard right. Tell that to hard righters who turned Fox off in 2020 once and for all when they called Arizona for Biden early.
I imagine those people with “We accept all people” yard signs actually think it’s true of themselves. Hypocrisy is best when the hypocrite is clueless.
This is similar to something Althouse has noted with respect to differences between men and women. Any difference must be viewed as positive, to the degree that it favors women.
It's is a good thing that Fox viewers change their minds when exposed to CNN. They didn't do this part of the experiment, but if CNN viewers changed their minds after exposure to FOX, this would show how pernicious FOX is.
from the Guardian article..
Given the steady stream of misinformation an avid Fox News consumer is subjected to..
Seems objective. No Preliminary biases HERE!
viewers of Fox News, the most-watched cable news channel in the US, are far more likely to believe the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen than the average American, and are more likely to believe falsehoods about Covid-19.
What ARE these false claim? What ARE these falsehoods
SEEMS like ALL the article is saying is: Propaganda WORKS. It leaves it up in the air WHAT Is the Propaganda
Alternative Headline: After being FORCED to watch CNN, viewers More Likely to Believe BULLSHIT!!
I pity the poor fool grad student that tries to replicate this study.
"And how they always use the word 'far' just before 'right' when talking about virtually anyone on the conservative side."
Yes, just as so many commenters here rail on about the "far left" in our government where there is barely any "left" at all.
Of course they would never do the same trick forcing Fox on someone for a month. That would be torture, a human rights violation.
Wow! UC Berkeley professors performing a "labor intensive" study of people watching TV. That's got to be a first right there!
Robert Cook
A distinction with a difference. Commenters are not news outlets.
Howard said...
Wendybar has the standard predictable response of a cult member. I hear Dr. Oz has one cool trick to melt brain fat instantaneously.
4/11/22, 7:50 AM
Then so does Liberal Jonathan Turley.
robother beat me to it. These types of “studies” are more complete BS than not.
" Robert Cook said...
"And how they always use the word 'far' just before 'right' when talking about virtually anyone on the conservative side."
Yes, just as so many commenters here rail on about the "far left" in our government where there is barely any "left" at all."
Well, they are supposedly, neutral media professionals. The commenters here are generally very upfront about describing themselves as conservatives. It's kind of an inversion of professionalism: The regular people, who don't do this for a living, are honest about their biases. The professionals, who should act like they are serious professionals, either lie about their biases or even worse, don't think they have biases.
“It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin”
Not being a Fox News watcher, I might not have qualified for the study, but I would have messed it up.
Protest is fine. It's the violent rioting that's the problem, and the presentation of violent rioting as protest that's an even bigger problem. Particularly if the rioting is based on the unarmed-black-man lie.
"Yes, just as so many commenters here rail on about the "far left" in our government"
So many? Like, who?
Why didn't the researchers run the same experiment in the other direction, paying CNN watchers to switch to Fox for a month?
And --better but more expensive-- why didn't they hold an auction to trace the demand curve for people to switch? If I am a CNN watcher, what is the price you need to pay me to watch Fox for a month? Am I an easy case who will do it for $1 an hour? Or do you need to pay me $$$? And then how does the "altered opinion" result vary along the demand curve?
This work has just begun!
Winston Smith, call your office. Big Brother will be universally loved (excluding only a few deviates) once we eliminate Fox News.
The study would benefit from a longitudinal component, as the subjects discover what they missed.
I look at the study--and its conclusions. Expose people to a different point of view and it might alter some opinions. Well duh.
But some mental giant --I don't know whether it was one of the study's authors, or some lefty came to the conclusion that "Fox News is not news. And the study proves it." Once I thought laughing, I remembered Mr. T's punchline from The Mod Squad---"I pity the fool".
So propaganda works.
David Broockman? David Broockman ?? Are you sure they don't mean David Brockman, that notorious vicious lying little sh*tweasel at the bottom-most toxic layer of Progressive Democrat thinking and political strategy?
I don't watch either Fox or CNN, but I also don't believe a word of this BS. It looks like an exercise in self-validated renewal of reputation.
Don’t we need some sort of control groups? This seem more like an experiment to reach a conclusion. Split the group in half and do counter programming?
did they take any MSNBC watchers and make them watch Fox?
You're either an approved smiley Socialist, or you're an extreme far-right fascistic Conservative.
That.
You really have to marvel and the arrogance and condescension of these people in positing CNN as the standard of truth and Fox News the opposite... I mean, effen CNN? They didn't even bother, didn't even think of doing the opposite, that is paying CNN viewers the same rate to watch Fox News.
Somebody who agrees to $15/hour to watch CNN is either desperate or living under a bridge.
I don't walk across the street for anything less than 10x that...
What was the control? What was the hypothesis?
This is was not scientific or science.
Did they try it the other way?
Not likely, CNBC watchers would have demanded union scale, post viewing grief counseling, and likely 1 or 2 of them would hav claimed injury so great as to qualify for permanent disability.
"And even stupider, they don’t realize where Fox is on the ideological spectrum."
What gets me is acting like Fox News has a substantial audience. Even in primetime, Fox News is being watched by about 0.75% of the American population.
I was a semi-professional research subject back in the 70s in LA for awhile. I checked the Daily Bruin a couple times a week to see what was being offered. I did some weird stuff; one study had electrodes on my head, another had some sort of sensor around my penis while I watched slides of naked woman. But none of them was half as bad as having to watch CNN or Fox for a month. Don't think they could pay me enough to do that.
"they assert that “Fox News largely did not inform viewers of Trump’s failure to protect the U.S. from the COVID-19 outbreak, whereas CNN extensively did so."
Really? What could he have done to "protect" us from Covid? Checked on New Zealand lately?
Why would I watch TV news at all?
Robert Cook: my take from your point is Fox serves Mamen Davos by appealing to half the masses with guns God gays gender, etc, etc. and the other half CNN appeals to those concerned with poor misunderstood disaffected etc, etc.
“They didn't do it the other way round? I'd be very interested to see that. Given my own biases over which set of viewers is the most in their bubble, I'd bet that the CNN viewers would be enormously changed by watching Fox for a month. They'd get exposed to a set of viewpoints that they never see at all.”
Very good friend from college has been liberal since forever. Being Jewish, much of it was probably peer group pressure. But then COVID-19 hit. He had spent much of his career in the pharmaceutical business, so understood more of the regulatory process and science than most. He knew how to do his own research, and did it. The mis and dis information on the subject was just so massive in liberal media, like CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc, that he essentially just shut them off. Yes, kids, those “vaccines” should never have been approved, even for EUA usage, by the FDA. They don’t prevent you from getting the virus or passing it on, and they have far more side effects that the other vaccines in common use. Orders of magnitude worse. At best, they can reduce the risk of those with significant comorbidities, including age. But there is no rational justification for vaccinating anyone younger than, say, 40 or 50, absent significant comorbidities. And esp kids with negligible chance of dying from it. But you wouldn’t know this from watching CNN. Nor that the 1/6 violent protests weren’t violent, on the part of the protesters, and had federal LEO involvement in their organization and execution. Or, even that the level of election fraud in 2020 was massive. Etc. So, with this heavily sanitized “news”, and limited access to alternatives, is it any surprise that the test subjects shifted left a bit? That friend? He has canceled his subscription to the NYT, and is actually looking at voting for a Republican or two, for the first time in a half century of voting. And after looking at the science that CNN (NYT, etc) wouldn’t cover, used Ivermectin, zinc, etc instead of the vaccines to easily survive COVID-19.
Robert Cook said...just as so many commenters here rail on about the "far left" in our government where there is barely any "left" at all.
2022 Federal budget: 6.011 trillion
Federal regulations: so voluminous that nobody even tracks this. Literally--it is an unknown number. But between 1995 and 2015, over 88,000 regulations were enacted.
How far left does someone have to go to be considered left?
Robert Cook - define "left" please. I know what I think it means, but I'd like to see what you think. (Obviously, I find the statement "there's barely any 'left' at all" curious.)
In my youth I made a point of reading National Review, The Progressive, Mother Jones, The Economist, and business magazines to get a range of perspectives. Over time I found that fact based arguments were favored by conservatives and opinion based arguments were favored by liberals. And that each side would talk past the other when discussing the same topic, usually by ignoring any salient point made by the opposition in favor of tooting their own horns.
More on 'Trump not protecting us from Covid': There's no way in hell the usual politicians and bureaucrats would have produced vaccines in such short order. It's not his fault they have underperformed.
The author's phrasing and CNN's "reporting" is an excellent example of bias.
@mezzrow "Can maybe U Chicago and Hillsdale run a similar study with the roles reversed?" No. Anyone who wants to do competent science needs to redo the previous study, and add on the cadre with the roles reversed. Feinman pointed this out long ago: Sociology does not know how to do competent science. https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html
"I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know the the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.
She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happened."
Yes, just as so many commenters here rail on about the "far left" in our government where there is barely any "left" at all.
Cook thinks anyone to the right of Lenin is "far right."
My lefty daughter last summer told me I have to "stop watching Fox News." They really think that way. I don't watch any TV except college football. I even forgot to watch any of the Masters.
"I imagine those people with “We accept all people” yard signs actually think it’s true of themselves. Hypocrisy is best when the hypocrite is clueless."
My neighbor's car has a "COEXIST" bumper sticker. It also has a "No Justice- No Peace" bumper sticker.
I can hear the Jokes at Fox News- CNN is so bad, they have to pay people to watch. 😎
Blogger mikee said...
In my youth I made a point of reading National Review, The Progressive, Mother Jones, The Economist, and business magazines to get a range of perspectives. Over time I found that fact based arguments were favored by conservatives and opinion based arguments were favored by liberals.
I used to follow Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly and commented on their blog. In 2004, I posted that I did not think single payer health care was desirable and preferred the French system, which uses market mechanisms to control utilization.
I was banned shortly after and some of the lefty commenters even went to my own blog, like Ritmo did, to attack me personally.
[P]olitical scientists... paid 304 regular Fox News viewers... to...watch... CNN
In related news, CNN viewership doubled that month...
My going rate to watch CNN is $400/hr.
Okay, read the study. It's a pre-print. Not your vaunted peer-reviewed science.
Very modest effects (moved treatment group by .11 or so standard deviations on this or that, mostly on things that CNN felt their audience should know about but that come off as tendentious, rather than factual).
Highlights:
The treatment group was 0.24 standard deviations more likely to agree that should allow voters to vote by mail in the 2020 election (punadj:<0:01;q= 0:01;pwy=0:06) and 0.18 standard deviations less likely to agree that VBM will lead to widespread fraud(punadj:<0:01;q= 0:02;pwy= 0:15).
Our findings suggest that partisan media may affect voters’ choices at least in part becauseit hides information about aligned incumbents’ failures and distorts perceptions of political rivals.
https://osf.io/jrw26/
Social contagion is spread through braying with a caustic influence. That said, principles follow principals.
I wonder which news source influenced more people to believe Black Lives Matter would use the money to buy a $6 Million mansion in LA to use as a podcast studio?
I did see the Yale researcher on a clip on CNN say that CNN is a news source that pushes the viewpoint of the left. Brian Stelter said he was dealing in "false equivalencies."
Your smart TV manufacturer knows what you watch down to the minute and will sell that data along with your name and address to anyone willing to pay for it.
That's how they got their sample group of 223,572 Fox-viewing registered voters.
Up above is an Althouse post about a person who is worried that someone might find out that he once was a man despite attempts to hide the fact. LOL.
Robert Cook said...
Face it...anyone who relies on either FOX or CNN as their primary purveyor of news is a low-information voter.
*************
OK, tell us what primary purveyors of new you rely on.
how come there was no such group in reverse inducements?
how come there was no such group in reverse inducements?
also does not say if the /researchers/ watch Fox also? or only CNN?
they could be make a mini sub-group in reverse!?
That's $105 for seven hours of pure torture? I feel for anyone that desperate.
Also, they conducted their "experiment" in the Fall of 2020 in the run-up to the election. CNN was at its most manic and dishonest at the time.
"The subjects of this study may have moderated some of their more extreme views,"
Um. "By the end of September, the CNN watchers were less likely to agree that: “It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin”.
Jacob Blake was resisting arrest for sexual abuse while stealing a car and kidnapping two children when he was shot. It wasn't an "overreaction" to protest his unfortunately non-fatal shooting, it was a demand for an end to enforcement of the laws. So, you are saying that support for law and order is an "extreme view". My, my, Professor. You've come a long way. Maybe it's all that Commie propaganda you read.
"By the end of September, the CNN watchers were less likely to agree that: 'It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin' and less likely to believe that: 'If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists', when compared with their peers who continued watching Fox News..."
A-hem. I believe shootings of police officers are way up since Biden took office. Oh yes: here is the opening of a story published on January 13, 2022...(wait for it)...on CNN:
"Last year saw the highest number of law enforcement officers who were intentionally killed in the line of duty since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an increase that comes as a rise in gun violence and homicides continues across the country." I guess those Fox viewers would have been right and those CNN viewers would have been wrong.
Shorter version: propaganda works. The Guardian should know.
Also, there is a selection bias here: only Fox viewers who are willing to waste seven hours a week watching CNN for $15.50 an hour signed up for the project.
An interesting counter-study could be done. The reveal in this study is that the group went back to Fox after the study.
I stopped watching CNN years ago, largely because I always felt I was being lied to in a very obvious way. They only gave one side of a story and appeared to engage in no critical analysis of what they were told. It was a low budget, low brainpower operation. Look at the way a bunch of UChicago undergraduates cut up that disinformation panel last week, among them CNN's own "Tater" Stelter.
On Fox they ask questions. Their "Democratic strategist" guests may be patsies, but they get to have their say.
Fox reports. You decide. Fair and balanced.
"Face it...anyone who relies on either FOX or CNN as their primary purveyor of news is a low-information voter."
Relying on any one source of news is usually a bad idea. I don't watch either Fox or CNN. When I am looking for news about the Ukrainian war, I don't bother with any American network as I really don't care how the war will effect the mid-terms. The Europeans tend to cover the war without much regard to (American) domestic politics.
"They didn't do it the other way round?"
They couldn't find 304 CNN viewers.
"A distinction with a difference. Commenters are not news outlets."
CNN and Fox News are not so much new outlets as continuous op-ed providers with enough references to bits and pieces of the news of the day to provide grist for their opining.
"2022 Federal budget: 6.011 trillion
Federal regulations: so voluminous that nobody even tracks this. Literally--it is an unknown number. But between 1995 and 2015, over 88,000 regulations were enacted.
"How far left does someone have to go to be considered left?"
How is the size of the budget and the proliferation of federal regulations an indication of leftism?
Hah! BLM, so true. Baby Lives Matter... All Lives Matter.
That said, diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) breeds adversity.
Can't say I'm surprised, but I am disappointed Cook has declined my request for dialogue.
I wish I could believe their lies and become a happy idiot like Howard. I hear there is a new company, Room 101 Inc, that can teach you to love Big Brother, looking into it.
In the nineteenth century there was no such thing as an “objective” press; newspapers were explicitly partisan (Arizona Republican, Tallahassee Democrat, etc). We have returned to that state today: Every media institution that is not explicitly right-wing is left-wing. Those who wish it were different first need to face that fundamental fact.
Big brother only makes bank when you are angsted up, Tim. Thank you for your service
"How is the size of the budget and the proliferation of federal regulations an indication of leftism?"
The no true Scotsman thing again.
Seems like a pointless study. There's so many ways this can go wrong. The most obvious one is the self-selection of the participants.
Then again, that was not the point. This point was to make fun of the "rubes" and then ask for more funding. Mission accomplished, I suppose.
1. A study a couple years ago showed Liberals got their news almost exclusively from liberal outlets whereas Conservatives got their news from both conservative and liberal outlets. IOW: in less of a bubble
2. Have you tried a “neutral” site, like Tangle? I have. Boring. I continue to get my news from a variety, left and right, Social and MSM. (That said, there’s a cable channel here in Hong Kong, DW Tv, from Germany that tries pretty hard, and pretty well, to give a balanced picture; eg, currently on Ukraine)
Stelter had the Yale researcher on his show to complain to about Fox and the guy said CNN was no better. So possibly the Yale guy does have a shred of integrity.
"(That said, there’s a cable channel here in Hong Kong, DW Tv, from Germany that tries pretty hard, and pretty well, to give a balanced picture; eg, currently on Ukraine)"
They have a live YouTube channel I watch all the time.
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