It’s time for lying with graphs! In fact, it’s time for lying generally! That’s right, it’s time to play everyone’s favorite game show, Fox News Exists!
This episode is brought to you by the fine folks at Media Matters. They monitor Fox News so you don’t have to.
On Monday’s episode of Fox & Friends, the “news” channel presented the following graphic. It’s a comparison of the total number of people who work with the total number of people who are on “welfare.” Your task is to name everything that’s wrong with it:
Buzz!
I’m sorry, but our time is up. We were looking for:
- The numbers are almost identical, but Fox News graphed them to make it look like there are 5 times as many people on welfare as are working.
- The number of non-farm civilian employees is over 140 million people, so at least many of those people on “welfare” are also employed.
- They counted people being on welfare if they lived in a house where anyone received any welfare at all; but employment only applied to the individual; nice statistical consistency!
That’s all we have time for. See if you can find more Fox News errors at home. Until next time, so long from Fox News Exists!
I recently had to write a visual argument essay, and we talked about how graphs and charts can be used in misleading or deceitful ways. I noticed immediately how the numbers were so close, but that they were graphed in such a way as to make it look like there was a huge difference.
My dad and I like to play a game where we turn it to Faux News with a stopwatch ready and see how long it takes for them to be misleading, deceitful, or make an outright lie. The last time we played it took just under eight seconds.