Watching Fox News leaves viewers less informed and more prone to believing misinformation, according to a study conducted by the WorldPublicOpinion.org at the University of Maryland.

While regular consumers of news were found to be more informed on issues surrounding the 2010 Senate elections, daily Fox viewers were significantly more likely to believe incorrect information on the economy, climate change and whether or not U.S. President Barack Obama was born in America.

“We found that those who watch Fox nearly every day, compared to those who never or only watch it a little, are more likely to believe some pieces of misinformation that circulated during the recent election campaign,” said Clay Ramsay, research director at WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Recent changes in U.S. legislation allowed unlimited election-related advertising spending, leading to widespread denouncements, smear campaigns and general misinformation appearing on TV screens across the country.

The study looked at TV stations’ ability to set their viewers right when it came to the facts.

Researchers found that the more you watched Fox News the more misinformed you became; it didn’t matter whether you turned on the channel as a Republican or a Democrat.

“The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it — though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican,” said the study.

In short, “it has been statistically proven that you will be more misinformed if you watch Fox (News) than other networks,” said Ramsay.

None of the news networks fared well when it came to combatting misinformation.

“No one really hit it out of the park,” said Ramsay. He pointed out that while federal income tax had gone down over the last two years since Obama took office, 38 per cent of people who daily read magazines or newspapers (online or in print) believed it had gone up, compared to 34 per cent of people who never glanced at the news.

For Ramsay, statistics like this just underline the extent of misinformation on Fox News. “For Fox (News) to stand out against that background it had to be really pretty bad,” he said.

“Fox News stood out for the high amount of incorrect information believed by its viewers.”

The study looked at the responses of 848 Americans after the 2010 federal elections.

Fox News viewers were more likely to incorrectly believe that the stimulus package had caused job losses (12 points more likely), that the health care law would worsen the deficit (31 points), that most scientists did not agree climate change was occurring (30 points), that the economy was getting worse (26 points) and that it was not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points).

The report corroborates a previous Program on International Policy Attitudes study that showed Fox News viewers were more likely to be misinformed when it came to the conflict in Iraq.

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While the study focused on Fox News, other media outlets did not escape unscathed. Daily viewers of MSNBC, NPR and PBS were more likely to incorrectly believe that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was spending money raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates. Daily viewers of network TV news were also more likely to think that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was signed into law by Obama and was opposed by most Republicans.

The general level of misinformation remained high, even amongst viewers of outlets that were deemed to be the most informed, with 20 per cent of MSNBC, NPR and PBS viewers believing climate change was a myth.