Bill Gates, Bioweapons, and Bad Data: Poll Shows Fox News Viewers Believe Covid Conspiracies, Misinformation in Big Numbers
A New Yahoo News/YouGov poll published on Friday was loaded with interesting data points related both to the 2020 election and to the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the most revealing and, perhaps, alarming, was the prevalence of support for conspiracy theories or just plain misinformation about the virus among viewers of cable news.
Fox News viewers were apparently the most affected respondents when it came to misinformation, including a startling 50% who believe it is true that billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates “wants to use a mass vaccination campaign” to “implant microchips in people.”
The big tell came far into the crosstabs from the survey, down around the 64th question, where YouGov presented list of stories, asking the respondents to rate their veracity.
For example, here is the result regarding the conspiracy theory that 5G technology is causing the pandemic, broken down by news source.
In the case of that particular conspiracy theory, cable news viewers by a landslide do not give it any weight. However, other items on the list had less promising results.
Take the Gates example. Half of all Americans (50 percent) who name Fox News as their primary television news source believe the disproven conspiracy theory, and 44 percent of voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2016 do as well — even though neither Fox nor Trump has promoted it. At the same time, just 15 percent of MSNBC viewers and 12 percent of Clinton voters say the story is true.
This image from the poll went viral on social media over the weekend.
Here is the image from the source.
An even larger percentage of Fox News viewers, 65%, believe that the virus was “engineered in a lab” by Chinese scientists. And almost half of Fox viewers (46%) responded that it is true that “COVID-19 was intentionally created by Chinese scientists as a biowarfare weapon.”
Note also the 33% of network news viewers who marked that theory true.
It’s not just Fox News viewers who let their news source bias affect their perception. A huge 65% of MSNBC viewers responded that it is true that “Coronavirus-related deaths have surged in states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas which have reopened their economies.” That is not, however, the case, and 62% of Fox viewers marked the statement false.
In fact, one of the most revealing aspects of the poll results is how it highlights the two opposite versions of reality among the cable viewerships. On the statement that “the U.S. has conducted more tests than the rest of the world combined,” 60% of Fox viewers marked it as true, while 70% of MSNBC viewers marked it false.
Fox viewers’ 46% who said it is true that the virus was created as a bioweapon were matched by 46% of CNN viewers who said it is not, while the Fox 50% who believe the Bill Gates conspiracy are matched by 50% of CNN viewers who do not. In both of these cases, the MSNBC numbers were higher for marking false.
This showed up in other areas of the survey as well, as Yahoo News noted.
And while most Americans believe that the CDC’s official coronavirus death count, which now stands at about 94,000, is either accurate (19 percent) or lower than the real number of COVID-19 deaths (45 percent), the right does not: 52 percent of Trump voters and 55 percent of Fox News viewers insist it is too high. Trump often says the same — even though many public health experts, including some within his administration, have been stressing that COVID-19 deaths and cases are almost certainly being undercounted.
In one encouraging point, most respondents agree that wearing masks can help to mitigate the spread of viruses. At least there is that. Still, only about half of Americans say they’ll even get vaccinated if and when one is developed.
Yahoo described the disparities in the result as the “choose your own reality” effect, and anyone who watches how people watch cable news is likely familiar with it.
It is dangerous. Not only because of the widespread acceptance of false information or conspiracy theories, but because of the widespread acceptance of *contrary* facts.
How long can a nation agree on policy when there are two well-defined realities that are in direct contradiction on not just opinions or ideas but basic facts?
