Our Disinformed Electorate

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: December 23, 2008 3:24:45 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Our Disinformed Electorate

Our Disinformed Electorate
December 12, 2008
by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Brooks Jackson
<http://www.factcheck.org/specialreports/ 
our_disinformed_electorate.html>

We saw more aggressive fact-checking by journalists in this election  
than ever before. Unfortunately, as a post-election Annenberg Public  
Policy Center poll confirms, millions of voters were bamboozled anyway.

	• More than half of U.S. adults (52 percent) said the claim that Sen.  
Barack Obama’s tax plan would raise taxes on most small businesses is  
truthful, when in fact only a small percentage would see any increase.
	• More than two in five (42.3 percent) found truth in the claim that  
Sen. John McCain planned to "cut more than 800 billion dollars in  
Medicare payments and cut benefits," even though McCain made clear he  
had no intent to cut benefits.

The first falsehood was peddled to voters by McCain throughout his  
campaign, and the second was made in a pair of ads run heavily in the  
final weeks of the campaign by Obama.

These aren’t isolated examples. One in four (25.6 percent) of those  
who earned too little to have seen any tax increase under Obama's plan  
nevertheless believed that he intended to "increase your own federal  
income taxes," accepting McCain's repeated claims that "painful" tax  
hikes were being proposed on "families." Nearly two in five (39.8  
percent) thought McCain had said he would keep troops in combat in  
Iraq for up to 100 years, though he’dactually spoken of a peacetime  
presence such as that in Japan or South Korea. Close to one in three  
(31 percent) believed widely disseminated claims that Obama would give  
Social Security or health care benefits to illegal immigrants, when in  
fact he would do neither.

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