For the second time this week, polling shows that a worrying number of people believe that health-care-reform legislation will create so-called death panels. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found that 45 percent of respondents believe that the proposals would allow government to make end of life decisions on behalf of Americans. A poll released by the Pew Research Center today isn't quite as disturbing─only 30 percent of those polled believed the myth. But here's where it gets interesting. Unsurprisingly, Republicans are more likely to believe in death panels, but fully 20 percent of Democrats also bought into the notion. The numbers also vary markedly depending on which news outlet is the preferred source of information, with Fox News viewers significantly more likely to think death panels are part of reform. Here's the breakdown:
Data courtesy of the Pew Research Center
Perhaps the difference should be expected. Fox attracts a conservative audience who are more likely to believe the worst of the president, and Fox's conservative commentators revel in stoking that unrest. Republican leaders like Chuck Grassley haven't helped matters, appearing to have little interest in quelling the controversy. (Grassley, it turns out, would rather drop funding for legitimate end-of-life counseling than dissuade his supporters of the notion of death panels.) But, putting questions about whether Fox has done it's journalistic duty in combating false information aside, it's possibly most concerning that an ill-considered, factually incorrect statement made on a social-networking site by Sarah Palin can resonate for this long, and this loud.
