Fox Doesn't Matter?: There is a NYT article on a study alleging that Fox's bias had no effect on the Presidential elections recently. "Why was Fox inconsequential to voter behavior? One possibility is that people search for television shows with a political orientation that matches their own. In this scenario, Fox would have been preaching to the converted. This, however, was not the case: Fox's viewers were about equally likely to identify themselves as Democrats as Republicans, according to a poll by the Pew in 2000. Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan offer two more promising explanations. First, watching Fox could have confirmed both Democratic and Republican viewers' inclinations, an effect known as confirmatory bias in psychology. (Borrowing from Simon and Garfunkel, confirmatory bias is a tendency to hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.) When Yankee and Red Sox fans watch replays of the same disputed umpire's ruling, for example, they both come away more convinced that their team was in the right. One might expect Fox viewers to have increased their likelihood of voting, however, if Fox energized both sides' bases. The professors' preferred explanation is that the public manages to "filter" biased media reports. Fox's format, for example, might alert the audience to take the views expressed with more than the usual grain of salt. Audiences may also filter biases from other networks' shows." While it may be true that it hasn't changed people's opinions, I think it has polarized people, and reduced honest and open dialogue between people of different political persuasion. That, in my opinion, is perhaps even worse.