Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Honest Mistake Or Clever Manipulation?

On The Colbert Report last week, host Stephen Colbert showed a clip from Fox News in which one of the anchors presented the results of a poll asking the public whether they favoured or opposed taking away unions' collective bargaining rights (as is being attempted in Wisconsin right now). In the initial segment, the on-screen results incorrectly portrayed a majority of the respondents (approx 60%) favouring the removal of those rights and a minority (33%) opposing them. The host then railed on at length about the evils of unions, how those in unions had become greedy and detached from reality, and so on... the usual conservative talking points that Ronald Reagan epitomized when he made up, out of whole cloth, his story about the "welfare queen driving her Cadillac" (who never existed).

Then, 20 minutes later, the host "corrected" those earlier results, saying that he'd accidentally reversed them. It was actually 60% who opposed taking away collective bargaining rights for union members, while only 33% were in favour of it. And then moved on to other news!

So... was this an honest - though staggeringly unprofessional and stupid - mistake, or is this something new in the conservative media's bag of tricks? When you don't like the poll numbers, just misstate them, launch into a lengthy rant using the fake results as your justification, and then quietly correct the error later... after the damage has been done. It's unlikely that your retraction will undo much of the effect of the original diatribe, after all.

[Update the next day: Today's Fox News example of media abuse involves them showing supposed footage of union violence in Wisconsin, the only problem being the palm trees in the background and short-sleeved shirts on the protestors not quite fitting what one would expect to find in late February in Madison, WI! So I'd say there isn't exactly a benefit of the doubt being earned there.]

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