Video: Bill O' Reilly makes fun of 14% of public who actually think Fox News is liberal

November 3, 9:09 AMPolitical Buzz ExaminerRyan Witt

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On his show last night Bill O' Reilly referenced a Pew Research Center survey which found that 47% of people view Fox News as "mostly conservative", 24% of people found view Fox News as neither conservative or liberal, and finally some 14% of the population who actually believes Fox news is mostly liberal.  O' Reilly make a joke about the 14% of people who view Fox News as mostly liberal saying those people must live in "crack house."  O' Reilly point is well made as one must wonder what 14% of the population views as "conservative" if Fox News is viewed as "liberal" by them.  If accusing President Obama of being a socialist is liberal then what must one do to qualify as conservative?  If actively promoting Tea Party protests is liberal then what must Fox News support to be considered conservative by these people?

On a more serious note the 14% figure does call into question the validity of the Pew Research Center.  Every survey will have some strange results of people who do not fit the norm or simply give strange answers but 14% is certainly larger than the the typical anomalies which show up as 3-5% on a survey of respondents.  There are really only three explanations for the abnormally high 14% number in the Pew Research survey. 

First it could be that 14% of people simply live in a cave and have no idea what Fox News is or how they cover the news.  If this is true then it calls into question the entire survey as those same people gave opinion on CNN, MSNBC, etc.  If these people called CNN too liberal then it greatly affects the accuracy of the headlines from this survey which essentially called every media outlet but Fox News liberal.

Secondly it is possible that people taking the survey simply did not care about the questions and started answering in a random fashion.  Many of us have taken part in a survey we are not invested in the results and after the survey starts lasting too long we simply start giving answers to be done with the exercise.  If this is the case it again makes one question the accuracy of the Pew Research Center survey as we must ask whether the results are really reliable if people did not even care about giving truthful answers.

Finally it is also possible that the survey was sufficiently confusing to cause 14% of the respondents to somehow answer "mostly liberal" when they normally would have answered "mostly conservative."  I have not seen the survey but if were organized in the kind of butterfly ballot form that caused the shenanigans of the 2000 election then it is conceivable that some could have been confused.  However again if this is truly the case then it would affect the validity of all the other results of the survey as many people could have identified MSNBC and CNN as "mostly liberal" when they in fact meant to provide another answer.

In conclusion the 14% result in the Pew Research Center survey is something to be laughed at but also something that calls into question the reliability of the entire survey.  No matter what reason you provide for the 14% of people who thought Fox News was "mostly liberal" it leads to the undermining of the foundations of the entire survey.

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