FAUX NEWS KEEPING UP A TRADITION

You may recall that FAUX News viewers were the least informed of all news consumers about the Iraq War. If not, here's a summary:

During the summer of 2003, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, together with the polling firm Knowledge Networks, conducted a large-scale study of U.S. public perceptions and misperceptions related to the Iraq War, with a special eye to determining what role the press might have played in this process. The polls were conducted from june through September with a nationwide sample of 3,334 respondents.

The study found three widespread misperceptions:

* 49 percent believed that the United States had found evidence that Iraq was working closely with al-Qaeda;
* 22 percent believed that actual weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq;
* 23 percent believed that world public opinion favored the United States going to war with Iraq.

Frequency of misperceptions by respondent's primary source of news.

# of misperceptions	FOX	CBS	ABC	CNN	NBC	Print	NPR/PBS
NONE	20	30	39	45	45	53	77
1 or more	80	70	61	55	55	47	23

Today, FAUX News viewers are more likely to believe the lies about health care than viewers of other networks:

In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.