Monday, Feb. 14, 2022
Do Fox News viewers believe more COVID-19 misinformation than viewers of other media outlets?
Fox News viewers tend to believe more COVID-19 misinformation than viewers of other media outlets.
A 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation examined the correlation between the news outlets people trust and the amount of COVID-19 misinformation they believe. It found that 36% of survey respondents who trust Fox News believe or are unsure of at least half of eight false statements related to COVID-19, compared to 11%, 12%, and 14% of respondents who trust CNN, MSNBC and NPR, respectively.
Fox's own research team accused regular contributors to the network of “spreading disinformation" in an internal memo from 2020 obtained by the Daily Beast.
Fox News was the most distrusted media outlet among 30 polled in a 2019 Pew survey. Forty-three percent of respondents reported trusting Fox, while 40% reported distrusting it.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- KFF COVID-19 misinformation is ubiquitous: 78% of the public believes or is unsure about at least one false statement, and nearly a third believe at least four of eight false statements tested
- US News & World Report Study: Fox viewers more likely to believe COVID falsehoods
- Daily Beast Fox News internal document bashes John Solomon, Joe diGenova and Rudy Giuliani for spreading ‘disinformation’
- Pew Research 5 facts about Fox News
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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