Fox News distorts unemployment rates in graphs about unemployment rates
By Rick PaulasDecember 14th, 2011, 5:45 pmComments (27)
Much of Fox News's fact manipulation is of the in-your-face variety, with hosts simply shouting out anti-Obama rhetoric as Cold Hard Truth and entire half-hours essentially paid advertisements for GOP candidates. But every now and then, they break out subtle tactics that are truly works of art. Sometimes it's a simple substitution of "Obama" for "Osama." Sometimes it's just shifting time a little bit and calling elections early, forcing others to follow suit as to not get "scooped." No doubt, every now and then, I'm sure, they insert a quick subliminal cut of Obama eating from a box of babies.
Well, the folks over at The Society Pages have caught another precious bit of fact-rearranging that's glorious in how subtle the manipulation is. Take a gander and see if you can catch it:
If you're having a hard time spotting it, first take a look at where the 8.9% and 8.8% unemployment rates on the left side of the chart fall on the y-axis. (That's the one that goes up and down, for those among us who've blocked out high school math classes; don't worry, I had to look it up too.) Then, scroll across to the other side — use a ruler or some other straight-edge if necessary—and see where this past November's unemployment rate, the best under President Obama's reign as Commander-in-Chief, falls. That 8.6%? Exactly in the same place as the previous month's 9%!
It makes sense, of course. If you have hours and days of programming scheduled attacking Obama's fiscal policies, how it's creating more unemployment throughout the country than ever before, you certainly don't want the most recent information on your graph to showcase that, you know, there's progress being made.
Commentarium (27 Comments)
They also elide the scale (i.e., don't start the y-axis at 0), which is a big journalism graph-making no-no.
Is it really? It's just as misleading to plot from y=0, because it would flatten the entire trend to look stagnant. Wouldn't that have played better into fox's trickery here? I wish people understood basic math concepts, like graphs, better.
Every graph that's meant for a mass audience should start at zero. It's the ethical standard. If a graph looks stagnant when starting at zero, it's probably not a good graph.
So FOX lies and distorts to assist Republicans and smear Democrats? Gosh, I had no idea.
Wow, a misplotted point on a graph. There's a Pulitzer in this for Hooksexup.
Missing the point?
Paulus certainly missed the point or, more likely, made a point where there wasn't a point to be made. What are you going to do - there are those obsessed with FNC and the rest of us who take everything we see with a grain of salt.
The out and out lies that are routinely told on Faux news, on an almost minute by minute basis, approximates the historical (dys)function of Pravda. The continuous lies they told their country helped, eventually, to destroy it. Just like Faux news with it's treasonous Neo Con propaganda are doing to our country.
The whole graph is a mess.
You can't tell what numbers on the Y axis associate with which line in the graph.
If the first line above the base is 8% and two lines above that are 8.5%, then two lines above that is 9.0%.
Which means that the first 9.0 on the graph is posted lower than it should be.
It's a POS as a graph, it's an approximate visualization of what a graph might be.
So anyway ... 8.6 percent unemployment is something to be proud of?!
Maybe if you are an ex-community organizer. And what about all those too discouraged to look for work?
MSNBC distorts every so-called fact they report in favor of the Democrats. And CNN generally skews left (although not as much as MSNBC). And let's not even talk about the bias here @ Hooksexup.
Even if what you said about MSNBC is true (when it comes to facts, to actual reporting, it's doubtful that it is, but let's just pretend that what you have to say is close to being true; if you catch them being as blatant as Fox is being here, please feel free to link it in a response to this comment), how is that an explanation/excuse for what Fox is said to have done in the case of this graph?
It's not an explanation of anything, I never said that... but as usual, Hooksexup presents their bias as if the same doesn't exist on the other side. The truth of the matter is, the liberal media is just as bad, just as distorted, as the conservative media. And the unfortunate side effect is that far too many people base their political viewpoints on blatantly skewed and often false information from BOTH sides.
If you only listen to those you already agree with you'll never learn anything. And that's even more true when listening to so-called "news" outlets like Fox or MSNBC, where highly-biased opinions and agendas are presented as factual news.
Link? Just go listen to anything Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews say about anything. The overwhelming left bias is blatant and unapologetic, and far too many of their "facts" are exaggerated to support their agenda which is no less disingenuous than what Fox perpetrates.
I'm not taking sides here, I'm calling them all out. It drives me crazy to see how many people around here (readers and writers alike) seem to think that the left is so innocent and perfect and the right is so evil and horrible. Or at least they present the stories and commentary that way, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Fox does not differentiate between their so-called "straight news" and opinion shows. MSNBC at least draws a line.
Is anyone else getting a gray bar over a chunk of the screen, new since the format change?
Hiya rm,
What browser and OS are you running? You can either respond here or to . Thanks for reading!
Internet explorer 8. Dodging (rhu)barbs and tomatoes. It only happens on the stories, not on the main hooksexup.com page.
Gotcha. Working on it. Thanks.
Damn, rm. How are you getting here all the way from 2008.
where's the article on OWS doing the same thing with their Student Debt graphic?
that's right, you're all in favor of OWS so their little display of dishonesty gets to stand.
https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/fact-check-exploding-student-loan-de...
Is OWS a huge organization that runs the biggest news broadcast station in America?
Oh, no, this is actually just a totally false equivalency.
that maybe it was an honest mistake by the junior intern designer who most likely put the graph together? Perhaps it's not as insidious as Hooksexup is making it out to be?
I mean, it doesn't at all change the fact that unemployment is still far too high, does it?
Almost certainly the case. If FNC wanted to distort the results, I suspect it would have mislabelled numerically as well.
The out and out lies that are routinely told on Faux news, on an almost minute by minute basis, approximates the historical (dys)function of Pravda. The continuous lies they told their country helped, eventually, to destroy it. Just like Faux news and it's treasonous Neo Con propaganda.
While I'm certainly not in favor of disinformation in any format, this is a pretty clear situation for Hanlon's Razor. And if you find yourself repeatedly applying Hanlon's Razor to one particular source? That just means they're EXTRA stupid, right?
The out and out lies that are routinely told on MSNBC news, on an almost minute by minute basis, approximates the historical (dys)function of Pravda. The continuous lies they told their country helped, eventually, to destroy it. Just like MSNBC "news" and it's treasonous leftwing socialist propaganda.
Now you say something