In discussion groups it is easy for me to spot people who get their news from Fox. They have the basic facts wrong. Fox viewers are especially ignorant people, either because ignorance drew them to Fox or because Fox miseducates its viewers.
Long ago I stood in a friend's backyard. I coached a girls soccer team the friend's daughter played on, and he had thrown us a party. He was pulling up stakes, moving to the South to join a spanking new TV network called Fox. As if a new network could survive and make money, I thought at the time.
What is hard is to spot misinformation on the TV shows I like. I watched many a show that explained that the Ebola crisis came about in part because the Republicans had cut funding for the Center for Disease Control, so the CDC was unprepared. Blame George W. Bush. I bought that narrative. It sounded right.
The fact is that Bush increased funding for the CDC. I don't know his motives, of course. Last year (2014) the CDC had a budget of nearly $7 billion. That's not shabby. In 2013 the Republican House authorized more money for the National Health Institute than President Obama requested. Increases and cuts in the budget were passed by combinations of Democrats and Republicans. And I am astonished that I got the thing wrong. (You don't get the whole picture if you stand too close.)
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