Peter, (01)
Actually, that is not true: (02)
> I think most mortals using common sense would have no
> difficulty in making the distinction between an opinion
> and a statement of fact. (03)
In the US, there is a TV network called Fox, which is owned
by the same person who bought a formerly respectable newspaper
called The London Times. There was a recent survey of people
who watched news programs from any of the four US commercial
networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox. (That is for over-the-air TV
channels, as opposed to the Fox and CNN cable news networks.) (04)
The survey had the following kinds of questions: (05)
1. Which TV news programs the viewers watched most frequently. (06)
2. Their knowledge of current events (as tested by multiple-
choice questions). (07)
3. And for each question, their feeling of certainty in the
correctness of their choice. (08)
It turned out that Fox viewers had the *lowest* number of
correct choices, but the *highest* confidence that their
choices were correct. (09)
Even more significantly, there is a satirical news program
called The Daily Show. It turned out that viewers who said
that The Daily Show was their primary source for news scored
spectacularly higher in knowledge of current events than those
who said that their primary source was the Fox cable news network. (010)
In short, it's definitely not clear whether (a) common sense
is adequate or (b) people usually exercise common sense. (011)
John (012)
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