A Graphic Lesson in How Fox News Perverts Even Their Own Skewed Polls

The recent shutdown of the government was the subject of controversy in the media for a couple of weeks. Both sides were spinning furiously to place the blame on the other. It should have been a simple task to figure out who was most responsible for the leadership vacuum considering that Republicans are in control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. But when you’re dealing with a Republican Party that isn’t interested in the truth, and is led by a world-class liar, nothing is as easy as it seems.

Fox News Trump

Following the agreement to keep the government open for another three weeks, the press set about to determine where the American people stood. They conducted polls asking which party was most responsible for the shutdown. Fox News was among those media outlets conducting such surveys. And when they were ready to release the results, they made sure that their preferred political prejudices were front and center.

Rather than disclose the most relevant information, the crack Fox News creative department prepared a graphic that they immediately put on the air. The image contained partial results from the poll that put Republicans in an undeservedly positive light. Here is the tweet Fox News posted of the story that they broadcast:

Wow. So the American people think that Democrats were most responsible for the government shutdown? Not exactly. The survey question actually gave respondents another option. Donald Trump received thirteen percent of the poll’s votes. That means that the combined total for the GOP and Trump was thirty-seven percent, which exceeds that of the Democrats. Never mind that the built in biases of Fox’s poll likely undercounts the Trump votes. It was a deliberate tactic to divide the right-wing options and then only report one of them to insure that the number would be lower. Notice that they didn’t ask whether Democrats or Chuck Schumer were responsible, just the Democrats. And that’s after Republicans made a full court press to cast the blame on the so-called SchumerShutdown.

Remember, this is a Fox News poll that Fox News is distorting. It demonstrates the lengths they will go to in order to protect their lord and overseer, Donald Trump. For the record, every other poll decisively reports that Trump and Republicans were to blame for the shutdown (see this, and this, and this). There isn’t any real dispute on that question. So Fox News had only two options. They could report the news honestly (OK, stop laughing), or they could whip up a phony graphic that distorts the truth and makes their side look like winners. Guess which option they chose.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Advertisement:

One thought on “A Graphic Lesson in How Fox News Perverts Even Their Own Skewed Polls

Comments are closed.