Media Matters vs. Fox News, Part 2

Last week, I posted on Media Matters and its tearing apart of a very misleading Fox News chart on unemployment since December 2007. Overall, I agreed with Jocelyn Fong, who conducted MM’s analysis, but I felt that she was a bit over the top, especially I felt the core of Fox’s argument was right on- after all, unemployment numbers are unemployment numbers.

However, late last week, my friend James Agresti- the founder of the think tank JustFacts.com and the co-host of Just Facts Radio- read the MM post. He immediately e-mailed me saying Media Matters not only had a legitimate gripe, but that “skewing the intervals is dishonest.” Essentially, James’ argument was the same as Fong’s: that by showing unemployment as consistently going up, without the correct change in employment since December 2009, Fox is giving its viewers the impression that unemployment is still going through the roof, despite the fact that- as a chart in the MM analysis shows- this is not the case. James took the time, in a follow-up phone call, to make this clear to me.

Fong and James made the same argument, but I somehow missed the significance during Fong’s analysis. I will be sure to be more careful in the future before posting.