Former policy adviser to Ronald Reagan releases study that finds that Fox News is hurting Republicans and making conservative voters dumber.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

The study, authored by Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the Treasury Department under George H. W. Bush and was also a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, found that Fox viewers tended to be less informed about current affairs than people who watch mainstream news -- and even people who don't watch the news at all. 

"Republican voters get so much of their news from Fox, which cheerleads whatever their candidates are doing or saying, that they suffer from wishful thinking and fail to see that they may not be doing as well as they imagine, or that their ideas are not connecting outside the narrow party base," Bartlett said. 

Citing a host of other studies, Bartlett found that Fox News viewers tended to have misguided beliefs about the Iraq War, the Affordable Care Act and other major issues. He also noted that Fox's audience tended to hold a bias against Muslims. 

"It appears that right-wing bias, including inaccurate reporting, became commonplace on Fox," Bartlett said.

The article goes on to say that this is especially concerning because "many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth." 

That means that any opinions which disagree with Fox or conservative talk radio are considered biased, and not worth their time.

Talking Points Memo had this to say about this study: 

Since Fox founder and chairman Roger Ailes opened shop in 1996, the effects of the powerhouse conservative channel on the media landscape have been widely noted. Bartlett, a onetime advisor to Rep. Ron Paul and President Ronald Reagan and official in the administration George H.W. Bush, cites several studies showing how Fox broke into an untapped market for a single conservative news source after years of FCC regulations which required equal time for political debate (the so-called "fairness doctrine" ended in 1987 under President Reagan.) 

But Barlett also surfaced studies which show that that the Fox Effect changed not only Americans' media diet, but their political behavior as well — boosting turnout for the GOP and pushing both Republicans and Democrats rightward in Congress.

Of course we have talked about this numerous times here at IM. 

Roger Ailes, who was an aide for Richard Nixon, was convinced that the media did not treat his President fairly and he believed it was due to a liberal bias. (It wasn't. The news back then simply reported the facts. And as we know, facts by their very nature have a liberal bias.)

So in 1996 Ailes, with the backing of Rupert Murdoch, decided to broadcast the news with a conservative bent and the rest is the stuff of journalist's nightmares.

Now our country is torn apart by ideological arguments, our politics are at a virtual standstill, and billionaires now openly purchase their own candidates and finance their campaigns.

Personally I think Roger Ailes is guilty of treason and should be tried for the crimes of selling the Iraq War to the American people, interfering with the Al Gore's election to the presidency in 2000, and undermining American journalism.

Here is how the Daily Show presenting 50 Fox News lies in 6 seconds.