Chart produced by Fox News, via MediaMatters
As you may have guessed from the title, this will be a brief post about Fox News.
Media Matters has a nice post up pointing out some misleading charts that Fox has been running. Wow. MM seems to have explained this pretty well, but I would like to add the following:
If I wanted to use some data to mislead you, I may plot some unrelated things and ask a leading question, implying causation. Or, maybe I would screw around with the scale, to flatten or exaggerate a curve. These would be misleading charts!
But what, then, is the Fox chart? A lie. It is a lie. It isn’t misleading, it’s straight up not real. It is made up. The data point for unemployment in Nov 2011 is 8.6%. The data point they plotted in its place was 9.0%.
There isn’t much more to say here, but its important to note the difference between valid data that has been presented in a misleading way, and numbers that have been made up.
520 Chestnut 
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