Being right just doesn't matter

This says nothing shocking, but it's quite sad nonetheless.

Asked to name the news source they most trusted, without any prompting, 59 percent of Egyptians said Al Jazeera, 52 percent of Brazilians said Rede Globo, 32 percent of Britons said the BBC, 22 percent of Germans said ARD and 11 percent of Americans said Fox News, each leading their respective nations.

...

The good news is that no single news outlet can garner more than 11% support from Americans. The bad news is that Fox News is the most trusted news source among Americans. This is most unfortunate. A 2003 Program on International Policy (PIPA) study found that Americans were severely misinformed about basic facts related to the war in Iraq.

An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq. Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.

But, check out the difference between people that got their news from NPR versus Fox News.

You can parse that poll anyway you want. But one thing is clear. Fox News actively misinforms its viewers. And, yet, somehow the network is more truted than any other single source of news. That is a national tragedy. We have a lot of work to do.

I don't profess to listen to NPR daily, nor do I ever watch Lehrer's news report at night. And yet, 3+ years ago, I was saying there was no solid link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, I knew that WMD's hadn't been found, and I knew that the world couldn't even remotely stomach the thought of the US invading Iraq. While I occasionally like to think that I possess above-average intelligence, there's no way I should have been more correct about what Iraq had and "winning the peace" would entail than the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State were. That's pretty pathetic. And in the end, whether they were wrong or just lying doesn't really matter. Either one is equally awful.

BooMan's right that what this study shows really is tragic...simply because there's no good way to combat this being that being right or wrong in no way affects the amount of air time you get to express your views (not to mention the fact that there are enough cable/internet options for getting your news that you never actually have to worry about being challenged with facts...you can always watch or read or listen to people saying what you want to hear whether it's right or not). The Iran nonsense proves that completely. The same people who dragged us, kicking and screaming, into Iraq are the ones that get microphone time to talk about Iran. The ones who were right all along have been labeled unpatriotic, or just downright crazy (figuratively, or now even literally), and they don't get to take part in the debate with kewl kidz.

UPDATE: 8:37pm

Not that this is a surprise either, but Ray McGovern, the 27-year CIA veteran who challenged Rumsfeld with his own words yesterday (Rummy denied saying them, of course), is now a certified jew-hating lunatic nutcase moonbat nutjob, not to mention a radical leftist...who happens to think like 2/3 of the country now thinks...but that's fine because that just means that 2/3 of Americans are Unamerican. And being that he's correct just makes him more of a nutjob.