MEDIA WATCH

realcities.com: DISINFORMED BY TV

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows
that a majority of Americans have held at least one of three
mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq and those
misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the
war. The three common mistaken impressions are that: (1) U.S.
forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; (2) there's clear
evidence that Saddam Hussein worked closely with the 9/11
terrorists; and (3) people in foreign countries generally either
backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and
opposing it. The analysis released Thursday also correlated the
misperceptions with the primary news source of the mistaken
respondents and found that people who relied on television were
more likely than other respondents to believe at least one of the
three misperceptions - especially if their main news source was
Fox.