Disinformed by TV

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows that a majority of Americans have held at least one of three mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq and those misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the war. The three common mistaken impressions are that: (1) U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; (2) there's clear evidence that Saddam Hussein worked closely with the 9/11 terrorists; and (3) people in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it. The analysis released Thursday also correlated the misperceptions with the primary news source of the mistaken respondents and found that people who relied on television were more likely than other respondents to believe at least one of the three misperceptions - especially if their main news source was Fox.