More proof that fox news misleads its readers.

[nygreenguy]

Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/ ... nt=671&lb=


A breakdown of the lies:

* 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
* 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
* 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
* 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
* 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
* 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
* 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
* 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
* 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

http://www.alternet.org/media/149193/st ... age=entire

So why does fox news exist if it clearly does a poor job of reporting the facts? Could it be that people care more about hearing what they want to hear vs. what is actually happening?

[micatala]

I will ask WP and E of E. Yes or no. Was Bill O'Reilly's claim that no one on FOX said people would go to jail for not buying health insurance true or false or "something else?"

NO, Period. Tell me, micatala, what happens when a person does not obey the law. They will be penalized and will eventually go to jail if they further refuse to cooperate with the law. The mandate hidden within the healthcare bill, that is absolutely vital and the cornerstone of obamacare, is the individual mandate. The name speaks for itself. If a person refuses to cooperate with this federal mandate there will be reprocussions which will ultimately end up in incarceration. So, NO, this isn't a lie. Actually, I'd say it's a lie for liberals to call this a lie.

OK. let me repeat, since you have yet again not addressed the claim in question but gone on to yet another issue.


The falsehood I asked you to address is that O'Reilly claimed no one on FOX said you would go to jail for not buying health insurance. Since there were people who made this claim on FOX, and in fact Glenn Beck made this claim on O'Reilly's own show. This claim is false.

Here are some links to videos. I don't want to hear anything about bias of the websites. That is irrelevant. Address what is in the videos which are all from show's on FOX. In fact, the first link should be quite sufficient.

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.co ... -video.php

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201004170001

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert ... s-ever-sai


Now, do some of the people in the sequence from the first link (put together by Huffpost) refer first to fines and penalties before saying "jail?" Yes.

Are some of the clips edited by Huffpost. It seems that some are.

But there is no doubt that some people on FOX said you could go to jail for not buying health insurance.

Thus, O'Reilly's claim that no one said this on FOX is empirically and without a doubt false.





The claim you now bring up is whether a person will go to jail for not buying health insurance. Now, this claim should also be considered false, but this is a different claim.


This second claim is false for the following reason.

If you don't buy the insurance, you then pay a tax penalty. You do not go to jail for not buying insurance. To assert otherwise is really false.

You could possibly go to jail for not paying your taxes, although this generally is rare and it applies to people who don't pay their taxes for whatever reason. I am not a tax law expert, but there are certainly people who go to jail for tax fraud. I am not sure how instransigent you have to be in not paying taxes, if you are up front about it, before you go to jail. In any case, it is not very commmon. But as I understand the health care law, you do not go to jail for not buying insurance.

So, sorry, BOTH your claims are false.


Now, I know you may be thinking that if they are going to jail for not paying the taxes due because some of those taxes are due to not buying insurance, then that is really going to jail for not buying insurance.


That argument suffers from some very severe problems. Consider what would happen if we applied that thinking to other situations.


A man is speeding because he was going to be late for work otherwise. He gets stopped and is given a $100 ticket. Would it be logical for this man to claim he had to pay $100 to the state because he was late for work?

No, of course not. He had to pay $100 for speeding. He did not pay $100 for "being late to work."


Or, let's say a man is renting a house. He is mad because he has to pay more taxes on his income because he is not getting a mortgage interest deduction, like his neighbor, who is making the same house payment as his rent payment, but of course is making it to a bank instead of a landlord. The homeowner pays $900 less on his taxes because of the mortgage deduction. The renter decides to withhold $900 because he thinks this situation is unfair.

He does this year after year and eventually gets thrown in jail for not paying his taxes.



Would anyone seriously say this person went to jail for renting a house???? Would news reports that said "The government is now throwing people in jail simply for renting a house" or "for not buying a house" be considered out and out lies? I would certainly think so. Such an assertion would be ridiculous.

Same with the health care law.


So, BOTH claims above taken as statements of fact are false, period. There is no spin involved, and any bias on my part or anyone else's is irrelevant. Facts are facts, regardless of who is uttering them. So are falsehoods.



And to reiterate yet again, whether or not the second claim is true or not is irrelevant to the claim O'Reilly made about what people said or did not say on FOX.

You have STILL not addressed that one, and have, yet again, changed the subject to a new claim.










As a final comment, I will allude back to something our departed friend grumpy brought up on page two. He provided definitions for bias, propaganda and lies or falsehoods. I agree with the definition that lieing implies intention. A statement could be a falsehood without being a lie if it is untrue but the person making the statement did not know it was untrue.


I have agreed determining intention can be difficult. However, it is not impossible, otherwise there would be no perjury convictions.



I have been focusing primarily on falsehoods. These are not the same as propaganda or bias, although a person can make use of falsehoods for propaganda purposes or because of bias.

But they are not the same thing.


MSNBC and FOX both engage in biased reporting and propaganda. I have admitted that repeatedly.

I am even willing to accept that people on MSNBC make false statements, although I have not seen anyone provide anything as blatantly false as O'Reilly's claim above on MSNBC. I am open to someone proving me wrong and have said I would look into E of E's recent link.




Now, will WP and East of E finally admit we have at least one example of a false statement on FOX? That is all I am asking at this point.

[micatala]

There is also evidence that fox isnt a news network, rather a political extension of the republican party.

As I would say of much of the MSM, who are simply liberal Democrats masquerading as journalists. They aren't pleased their monopoly is gone.

Talking point memos from republican politicians to fox news have been intercepted and their contents are repeated verbatim on the air.

You mean like this NPR exec caught making Democratic talking points?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/caught- ... ctual-gop/

At least FOX isn't taking taxpayer money as NPR is, for now.

Once again, this is conflating bias or ideology with factuality. FOX has been documented to blatantly lie. So far, nothing approaching the lies told on FOX have been documented by the "MSM" or even MSNBC and certainly not NPR.

Google 'Rachel Maddow Lies' and you'll find this and a lot more:

http://www.globalfinancialmeltdown.com/?p=17700

Once again, what you call lies I would prefer to call legitimate politcy differences or mistatements. It seems to be part of the Saul Alinsky strategy to demonize opponents and criminalize policy differences. "Politician X is not just wrong, he is a bad person." We need to attack ideas and arguments, not people. It is impossible to look in anyone''s head and declare 100% that they knowingly lie. For instance, I hear liberal falsehoods all the time, but many of those people just don't know any better.

OK. I checked out the short video from Leno and did a little research.

In fact, here is another Maddow critic making the same criticism.

http://katypundit.com/news/maddow-conti ... ributions/

As NewsBusters first reported last Wednesday, Maddow made virtually the same statement on her February 18 program:

MADDOW: Of the top ten outside spending groups in last year’s elections, seven of them were right wing groups, groups like the Chamber of Commerce, and Karl Rove`s organizations, which are mostly funded by billionaires. Conservative groups like the American Future Fund.


The only non-conservative groups that cracked the top ten in the last election were the Public Employees Union and the SEIU, and the teachers union, that’s it. In terms of large scale money spent in elections, unions are the only competition that Republicans have.




The following Monday she said:

MADDOW: Here again are the top ten big money contributors in last year’s elections, seven of the top ten are right wing. The only three that are not are — ding, ding, ding — unions.


******************
Once again, here are the facts.



Maddow is actually referring to “outside non-party committees� wherein seven of the top ten contributors in 2010 were indeed conservative, with the only three liberal contributors being unions. These are groups that contribute money for political causes but not specific candidates. That’s why they’re deemed “non-party.�



If you look at all “outside spending groups� for 2010 – which by Maddow’s wording consistently has been the implication – you’ll find that four of the top ten contributors were liberal with only two of them being unions.

The problem seems to be which category or list you are looking at, and how the various lists are referred to, specifically by Maddow.

Is Maddow intentionally lieing? Could be. I would agree that she should make clear which list or category she is using.

But is this anything like the O'Reilly falsehood?

Well, no. In this case, while I agree Maddow is likely practicing spin by picking a list that makes the case she wants to make, and that she may also be engaging in equivocation by using language which makes it unclear which list she is actually referring, this is not a blatant mistatement of fact like my example from FOX, as clearly is the case with O'Reilly's claim.



I would even agree Maddow does this type of equivocation not infrequently.

In fact, I'll give you another example. She did this earlier this week as she was accusing Republicans of being hypocritical when they claimed to be for small government. Her argument was that Reps claim to be for small government, but then promote legislation which is instrusive into people's lives, like making people jump through more hoops and have waiting periods for abortion, or banning gay marriage.

THis is equivocation, spin if you will, on what "big government" or "small government" means. Obviously most Republicans are referring to spending when they talk about big or small government, not measures on abortion or marriage which have essentially no budget impact. While Maddow has something of a point, she is clearly not representing the Republicans as they would represent themselves and is clearly not using their language as they would use it themselves.


Again, I have agreed MSNBC and FOX do this type of thing all the time.


This is where I would agree with WP and E of E that some things that people label lies or falsehoods are really subjective matters of opinion, or as in two examples on Maddow here, fallacious thinking or equivocation.



BUt what O'Reilly said about his network's statements on jail time for not buying health care is of an entirely different ilk than this. THere is no ambiguity there. Either people did or did not say what he said they did not say on FOX, and well, they did say it.

[East of Eden]

I will ask WP and E of E. Yes or no. Was Bill O'Reilly's claim that no one on FOX said people would go to jail for not buying health insurance true or false or "something else?"

NO, Period. Tell me, micatala, what happens when a person does not obey the law. They will be penalized and will eventually go to jail if they further refuse to cooperate with the law. The mandate hidden within the healthcare bill, that is absolutely vital and the cornerstone of obamacare, is the individual mandate. The name speaks for itself. If a person refuses to cooperate with this federal mandate there will be reprocussions which will ultimately end up in incarceration. So, NO, this isn't a lie. Actually, I'd say it's a lie for liberals to call this a lie.

you cant send someone to jail for something that isnt a crime. The person would be fined, and if they didnt pay it, it would be included on their taxes. It is not a misdemeanor, felony or any sort of crime punishable by incarceration.

So then yes, it would be a lie to say you can go to jail for not participating.

Depending on how the administration is currently spinning it, they have described this as a tax. It would be collected by the IRS, and people can go to jail for not paying their taxes.

To address the earlier claim by Canada that FOX isn't a news channel, that is ridiculous. I've been watching the FOX news coverage on Japan, and it is no different than other channels. Canada seems to be discriminating because they don't like the FOX opinion shows, but then they don't have much Second Amendment rights up there either.

[nygreenguy]

Canada seems to be discriminating because they don't like the FOX opinion shows, but then they don't have much Second Amendment rights up there either.

Thats because they are Canadian and dont have our constitution.

[micatala]

I will ask WP and E of E. Yes or no. Was Bill O'Reilly's claim that no one on FOX said people would go to jail for not buying health insurance true or false or "something else?"

NO, Period. Tell me, micatala, what happens when a person does not obey the law. They will be penalized and will eventually go to jail if they further refuse to cooperate with the law. The mandate hidden within the healthcare bill, that is absolutely vital and the cornerstone of obamacare, is the individual mandate. The name speaks for itself. If a person refuses to cooperate with this federal mandate there will be reprocussions which will ultimately end up in incarceration. So, NO, this isn't a lie. Actually, I'd say it's a lie for liberals to call this a lie.

you cant send someone to jail for something that isnt a crime. The person would be fined, and if they didnt pay it, it would be included on their taxes. It is not a misdemeanor, felony or any sort of crime punishable by incarceration.

So then yes, it would be a lie to say you can go to jail for not participating.

Depending on how the administration is currently spinning it, they have described this as a tax. It would be collected by the IRS, and people can go to jail for not paying their taxes.

To address the earlier claim by Canada that FOX isn't a news channel, that is ridiculous. I've been watching the FOX news coverage on Japan, and it is no different than other channels. Canada seems to be discriminating because they don't like the FOX opinion shows, but then they don't have much Second Amendment rights up there either.

I would certainly not disagree that a lot of the coverage on FOX, in particular coverage of daily events, is much the same as on other networks.

Is Canada "discriminating?" They are simply asking that shows or perhaps networks that call themselves "news" are truthful. They seem to have determined, at least overall as a network, that FOX does not meet that standard. I don't think this means everything on FOX is untruthful or biased, just that enough of it is not truthful that it does not count as news.

This does not discriminate against any free speech rights that might exist in Canada, as FOX can still say whatever they want. So, how is Canada "discriminating?" What do you mean by this?

I am not sure what your reference to the second amendment has to do with anything.


Also, you have not addressed the falsehood stated by O'Reilly. Whether or not O'Reilly counts as "news" or "opinion" is irrelevant. His truthfulness is the issue.

[WinePusher]

The falsehood I asked you to address is that O'Reilly claimed no one on FOX said you would go to jail for not buying health insurance. Since there were people who made this claim on FOX, and in fact Glenn Beck made this claim on O'Reilly's own show. This claim is false.

Now I understand, you cannot find a lie of high magnitude committed by this Fox anchor so you must resort to this miniscule, unimportant, non-issue lie. I could care less what a Fox anchor claims about his fellow anchors and whether its true or not. If Bill's claim about an actual issue was false, like his claim that you would go to jail if you didn't purchase health insurance, then we might have an actual issue of lying here. So, in sum total, what he said was a lie/error/blunder/whatever, but if this is the best you can come up with it shows your position to be extremely weak.

[micatala]

The falsehood I asked you to address is that O'Reilly claimed no one on FOX said you would go to jail for not buying health insurance. Since there were people who made this claim on FOX, and in fact Glenn Beck made this claim on O'Reilly's own show. This claim is false.

Now I understand, you cannot find a lie of high magnitude committed by this Fox anchor so you must resort to this miniscule, unimportant, non-issue lie. I could care less what a Fox anchor claims about his fellow anchors and whether its true or not. If Bill's claim about an actual issue was false, like his claim that you would go to jail if you didn't purchase health insurance, then we might have an actual issue of lying here. So, in sum total, what he said was a lie/error/blunder/whatever, but if this is the best you can come up with it shows your position to be extremely weak.

Well, first off, both claims I think can be said to be false by any reasonable definitions of the terms in use, not just the first.

Secondly, I appreciate the admission that the first claim on what was said or not said on FOX made by O'Reilly is false.

Thirdly, I agree, anyone can have their own opinion of how "important" a lie or falsehood is.

However, I would say it is important for several reasons.

First, because of what seems to be the purpose of both falsehoods. The purpose is political. Get people to have a negative view of the law by scaring them. This end seems to justify the use of misinformation.

The falsehood regarding what I will call the "first claim" on what was said or not said on FOX is an implicit admission that the second claim is also false, otherwise why go through the trouble of repeatedly and voiciferouslsy claiming no one on FOX said this?


Why would O'Reilly, despite the easily available evidence from his own show and other shows on his own network, tell a U.S. Senator he was mistaken when in fact the Senator was absolutely right?

If the second claim on going to jail for not buying insurance was true, why would O'Reilly deny that anyone on FOX had made it?


The best explanation for this is that O'Reilly wants to have it both ways. He wants to smear the health care law as much as he can, while being able to deny he or his compatriots made any false statements about the law.



The first falsehood is also important because it does speak to the credibility of O'Reilly at the very least, if not FOX in general. If he is willing to make such a bald-faced and easily debunked falsehood and seemingly expect people to believe it, what does this tell us?


It tells me that O'Reilly is more concerned about persuasion than he is about truth.

It tells me that he is confident that he can bluster at least some people into believing a falsehood.







Now, I am open to "ranking" the importance of falsehoods by any reasonably objective means we can come up with. To me, the following criteria would be relevant. Feel free to suggest others.



Does the falsehood have the capacity to change public opinion and thereby public policy? I'll grant the first claim does not, but the second false claim does.

Is the intention or effect of the falsehood to prop up the credibility of the person making the claim? The first claim DOES seem to meet this criteria. And this criteria is important because of the next.

Does the falsehood have the intention or effect of preserving the capacity for further deception or persuasion?


I'll note one can apply all of these criteria not only to falsehoods but to other propaganda techniques, like those I mentioned above with respect to Maddow. Clearly Maddow is also interested in persuasion. While she does not, in the example I provided or the one East of Eden provided, engage in blatant mistatements of fact, she does use equivocation to her ends.




Also, I will note that when confronted, O'Reilly did not acknowledge his error, he doubled down. If anyone has an example of Maddow sticking to a falsehood in the face of contravening evidence presented to her, please feel free to bring that up.

[micatala]

Here is an example of a false statement made by Rachel Maddow.

"Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin’s finances, Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year."
Rachel Maddow, Thursday, February 17th, 2011.

Further details at the link below.

http://politifact.com/wisconsin/stateme ... udget-sur/

It has taken hold with conviction: the idea that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ginned up a phony budget crisis to justify his bold bid to strip state employees of most bargaining rights and cut their benefits.

A volley of e-mails, blog posts and inquiries to reporters followed a Madison Capital Times editorial on Feb. 16, 2011, that said no state budget deficit exists for 2010-’11 -- or if it does, it’s the fault of Walker and the Republicans in the Legislature.

Liberal MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow joined in Feb. 17, accusing Walker of manipulating the situation for political gain.

"Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin’s finances, Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year," she said. "I am not kidding."

She added a kicker that is also making the rounds: Walker and fellow Republicans in the Legislature this year gave away $140 million in business tax breaks -- so if there is a deficit projected of $137 million, they created it.

Maddow and others making the claim all cite the same source for their information -- a Jan. 31, 2011 memo prepared by Robert Lang, the director of the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

It includes this line: "Our analysis indicates a general fund gross balance of $121.4 million and a net balance of $56.4 million."

We were curious about claims of a surplus based on the fiscal bureau memo.

In writing it when it was released, reporters from the Journal Sentinel and Associated Press had put the shortfall at between $78 million and $340 million. That’s the projection for the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2011.

Walker himself has settled on $137 million as the deficit figure, a number reporters have adopted as shorthand.

We re-read the fiscal bureau memo, talked to Lang, consulted reporter Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel’s Madison Bureau, read various news accounts and examined the issue in detail.

Our conclusion: Maddow and the others are wrong.

There is, indeed, a projected deficit that required attention, and Walker and GOP lawmakers did not create it.

More on that second point in a bit.

The confusion, it appears, stems from a section in Lang’s memo that -- read on its own -- does project a $121 million surplus in the state’s general fund as of June 30, 2011.

But the remainder of the routine memo -- consider it the fine print -- outlines $258 million in unpaid bills or expected shortfalls in programs such as Medicaid services for the needy ($174 million alone), the public defender’s office and corrections. Additionally, the state owes Minnesota $58.7 million under a discontinued tax reciprocity deal.

The result, by our math and Lang’s, is the $137 million shortfall.

It would be closer to the $340 million figure if the figure included the $200 million owed to the state’s patient compensation fund, a debt courts have declared resulted from an illegal raid on the fund under former Gov. Jim Doyle.

A court ruling is pending in that matter, so the money might not have to be transferred until next budget year.

To be sure, the projected shortfall is a modest one by the standards of the last decade, which saw a $600 million repair bill one year as the economy and national tax collections slumped.

But ignoring it would have meant turning away eligible Medicaid clients, which was not an option, Lang said.

This same situation has happened in the past, including during the tenure of Doyle, a Democrat. In January 2005, a fiscal bureau memo showed a similar surplus, but lawmakers approved a major fix of a Medicaid shortfall that would have eaten up that projected surplus.

Reporters who cover the Capitol are used to doing the math to come up with the bottom-line surplus or deficit, but average readers are not. (The Journal Sentinel’s Stein addressed these and other budget questions in a follow-up story.)

So why does Lang write his biennial memo in a way that invites confusion?

Lang, a veteran and respected civil servant working in a nonpartisan job, told us he does not want to presume what legislative or other action will be taken to address the potential shortfalls he lists.

Admittedly, the approach this time created the opportunity for a snappy -- and powerful -- political attack.

But it is an inaccurate one.

Meanwhile, what about Maddow’s claim -- also repeated across the liberal blogosphere -- that Walker’s tax-cut bills approved in January are responsible for the $137 million deficit?

Lang’s fiscal bureau report and news accounts addressed that issue as well.

The tax cuts will cost the state a projected $140 million in tax revenue -- but not until the next two-year budget, from July 2011 to June 2013. The cuts are not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem.

Here’s the bottom line:

There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it.

We rate Maddow’s take False.

To be fair, Maddow does not seem to be in any way intentionally making false statements, but has probably been guilty of not doing her homework. As the passage above notes, a small part of the memo does imply Wisconsin is expecting a surplus. The memo itself is not incorrect, but the passage in question was cited without taking into account the larger context.


I should note that the same politifact link has other falsehoods by both Governor Walker and some of his democratic opponents, some that they classify as the "pants on fire" variety. However, since we are focused on the media in this thread, I'll forego any commentary on those.


If we are going to get into "grading falsehoods" I would suggest another criteria should be how avoidable the falsehood is. If a media person could reasonably have been expected through due diligence to avoid making a false statement, that is a "worse" falsehood than another, everything else being equal.

If a media member repeats false information that they could reasonably be expected to consider reliable, then they have little or no fault.


Both false claims about the health care law and the reporting it received on FOX are clearly ones that should have been avoided and could have been through even cursory research. It is frankly hard to see how either of them was made unintentionally.


Maddow's false claim above is one I think she deserves some blame for. She is a smart woman and I think either did not do her due diligence in reviewing the whole memo or accepted the snippet without questioning what the larger context should be. Poor form either way.


To bring in another example, Maddow's error here is in some ways like FOX's airing of the Breitbart video on Shirley Sharrod and the statements they made based on it. They did not do their due diligence and made a lot of statements completely unjustified in retrospect. To his credit, O'Reilly DID offer a mea culpa of sorts on this one.

The difference, though, is that FOX should have know Breitbart was not a reliable source and should have been even more aware to practice due diligence.

[micatala]

Here is a discussion on a claim made by Eric Bolling on FOX about teacher pay in Wisconsin. Politifact rated it as "barely true."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... nsin-teac/


To the extent the claim should be considered false, it seems to be the result of poor homework and fallacious thinking. Bolling compares Wisconsin teachers to all private sector workers, forgetting the teachers tend to be much more highly educated than the average worker.

[micatala]

And as a final follow up before I get onto something probably more useful for the day, here is politifact's response to challenges from MSNBC on the Maddow statements on Wisconsin's alleged budget surplus.


http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... el-maddow/


Suffice it to say, I am lowering my view of Maddow's reliability. She still has a long way to go to be as bad as O'Reilly, but this particular incident is quite unimpressive.