Is Fake News Hard-Wired? Study Finds People Misremember Facts To Fit Their Beliefs

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I recently criticized NBC Meet The Press host Chuck Todd for suggesting that Trump supporters are fantasy-prone dimwits who just want to be lied to…

NBC News anchor Chuck Todd is under fire for an openly derisive comment about Trump supporters as effectively delusional drones who want to be lied to. He even added a dig at belief in biblical accounts like Noah’s Ark. It is the latest example of how open bias has become the norm on mainstream media. Imagine if Todd said Obama supporters are ignorant voters who just want to be lied to. This is precisely why the media is now driving some voters to Trump and reinforcing echo-journalism on both sides.

On Sunday’s  “Meet the Press,” Todd criticized “misinformation” in the media and referenced a “fascinating” letter to the editor of the Lexington Herald Leader from last January. The letter read, “[W]hy do people support Trump? It’s because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales… This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good… The more fairy tales and lies he tells the better they feel . . . Show me a person who believes in Noah’s ark and I will show you a Trump voter.”

Todd used the letter to say to New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet “This gets at something, Dean, that my executive producer likes to say, ‘Hey, voters want to be lied to sometimes.’ They don’t always love being told hard truths.”

Baquet was not sold on the theory and responded “I’m not quite sure I buy that. I’m not convinced that people want to be lied to. I think people want to be comforted, and I think bad politicians sometimes say comforting things to them.”

My first reaction was to recoil at the transparent use of a letter to say indirectly what Todd did not want to say directly. The point however was abundantly clear as was the inherent bias. The fact that Todd and Baquet would have a pseudo intellectual discussion of whether Trump voters are mindless zombies only magnifies the concerns. The issue was presented as whether this is now a clear fact or a developing fact. The question itself however is treated as mainstream and obvious.

Half of this country opposes impeachment and over 40 percent Trump. Are they all mindless drones seeking to be lied to? Stay tuned to NBC for the developing answer.

And now, a new study may indicate why people across the political spectrum tend to ignore opposing views and rest comfortably with echo-journalism.

Researchers at Ohio State University found that people tend to misremember numbers to match their own beliefs. They think that they are basing their views on hard data when they are actually subconsciously tailoring that data to fit their biases.

In the study, participants were given factual numerical information on four different societal issues. The researchers matched the results of two tests to support the views of the subjects and two to contradict those views.

For example, one study showed that there were 12.8 million Mexican immigrants in the United States in 2007 but fewer (11.7 million) in 2014. On the divergent studies, the subjects routinely misremembered the numbers. Thus, for people on the immigration issue, the subjects were most likely to misremember the lower figure in 2014 if they opposed current immigration levels.

This explains a lot, but I still insist that the Chicago Cubs have won 9 out of 10 of the last World Series championships.