Don’t believe all the news you hear on commercial TV and radio
4 February 2025
Amanda Meade, writing for The Guardian:
People who get most of their news from commercial TV and radio are more likely to believe the conspiracy theory that climate change is a natural phenomenon rather than caused by humans, a new study has found.
The research conducted by Monash University, based in Melbourne, Australia, also found people who sourced news from commercial media outlets, generally scored lower on a measure of civic values, compared to those relying on non-commercial, and public, broadcasters. People with lower civic value scores tend to be more reluctant to take on views that clash with theirs.
And, if I’m understanding the study findings correctly, almost sixty-percent of Australians source news from social media platforms. With Facebook about to do away with fact-checkers, that’s going to be a lot of people with access to news that possibly has not been substantiated or verified.
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