The Data Are In: Fox News Misinforms, Creates Stupidity

When I see a TV set turned to Fox in a health club, or a highway fast-food restaurant or motel lobby, I think, "there goes the country...no wonder there's so much ignorance out there."

And now there's a study showing I've been right: People who watch Fox News [sic] are less informed with worse command of facts than people who watch no TV news, that study shows.

And coincidentally, A Fox 'News' case in point - -  that makes the point, too:

Fox News' Megyn Kelly calls pepper spray a 'food product'

Published: Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 3:50 PM     Updated: Tuesday, November 22, 2011, 4:02 PM

 

YouTubeA screen grab of a YouTube video shows a police office shooting pepper spray at Occupy Wall Street protesters who were peacefully sitting on the ground at the University of California in Davis.

...Here was Bill O'Reilly's defense of the university cops:

"I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police," he said, "particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus."

O'Reilly didn't bother to elaborate on why abusing violent force against liberal students might be more justifiable.

But he did ask anchor Megyn Kelly, the show's legal expert, if pepper spray "just burns your eyes, right?"

"It's like a derivative of actual pepper," she replied dismissively, in lieu of any actual scientific knowledge. "It's a food product, essentially."

So Kelly shouldn't think twice before putting it on her salad.

In fact, commercial pepper spray is at least 1,000 times "hotter" than a jalapeño pepper, Scientific American points out.

And police use high-grade sprays that are even more intense. Just because it's called "pepper spray" doesn't make it a home kitchen product -- this potent chemical has been linked to cardiac, respiratory and neurological problems and sudden death...

Yet meanwhile, Fox News viewers are being told there's no reason to question police actions. Which leaves us little cause to question, either, why a recent study found this network's audience so uninformed on major news events.