On Memorial Day afternoon, CNN looked down their noses at the public, reporting on a poll that found most of the American people are are way too overconfident at spotting fake news.
As usual, they offered no humility about all the fake news that they spread about the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians and other pseudo-scandals. Instead, they mocked people who watch OAN and Fox News.
CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy appeared as a guest on CNN Newsroom to discuss the findings of a recent survey claiming that about 75 percent of Americans "overestimate their ability" to spot fake news. Host Victor Blackwell set up the segment: "As many as three in four Americans overestimate their ability to discern whether a headline is real or false on social media or across the internet broadly. That's according to a new study from the University of Utah and Washington University in St. Louis."
Darcy did not give specifics of any of the questions that were asked to test the knowledge of survey participants. Even online, CNN offered no link to how this study was done. But he still mocked consumers of conservative news sources as much less in touch with reality.
After recalling that 90 percent of respondents believed themselves to be above average in their ability to evaluate news credibility, contradicting the study's conclusions, Darcy concluded by suggesting that OAN and Fox viewers had more difficulty with the test:
This really just highlights this news literacy problem that we have in this country where people are consuming misinformation, conspiracy theories, things that are just not true. And they don't know it. In fact, they think they are better than other people at identifying that kind of false information. It's something we really don't talk enough about. We kind of laugh off, you know, I think, some of these conspiracy theories because they're so delusional and obviously not true, but for the people who are watching a channel like OAN or even Fox, they very much believe it.
Blackwell then injected: "They're designed to appear credible. They're designed to look like they are real news. In fact, they are not. Oliver Darcy, thanks so much."
It is noteworthy that a recent study found that consumers of liberal news sources like CNN -- which misinforms viewers on a variety issues -- were less able to give accurate answers to questions about current events than Fox viewers.
This episode of CNN Newsroom was sponsored in part by Tempurpedic. Their contact information is linked.
Transcript follows:
CNN Newsroom
May 31, 2021
3:41 p.m. Eastern
VICTOR BLACKWELL: As many as three in four Americans overestimate their ability to discern whether a headline is real or false on social media or across the internet broadly. That's according to a new study from the University of Utah and Washington University in St. Louis. Let's bring in CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy for more. People are really bad, and they just don't know how bad they are. Is that what we're learning from this?
OLIVER DARCY: That is, Victor. It's actually a really revealing study that's come out. People are just overconfident in their ability to detect false news. And so researchers asked participants, you know, "How well do you think you can identify false news?" And 90 percent of participants -- they said that they are above average in identifying false news. But when researchers compared that number to the actual data from the study after they take the survey about, you know, their knowledge on current events and compare it to the actual data, people place themselves, on average, about 22 percentile higher than they scored on this test.
And so, Victor, this really just highlights this news literacy problem that we have in this country where people are consuming misinformation, conspiracy theories, things that are just not true. And they don't know it. In fact, they think they are better than other people at identifying that kind of false information. It's something we really don't talk enough about. We kind of laugh off, you know, I think, some of these conspiracy theories because they're so delusional and obviously not true, but for the people who are watching a channel like OAN or even Fox, they very much believe it.
BLACKWELL: They're designed to appear credible. They're designed to look like they are real news. In fact, they are not. Oliver Darcy, thanks so much.
