Thursday 26 November 2009

Can't anyone at Fox News do percentages?!





Given their recent run of factual faux pas, it would appear that Fox News is collapsing under its inability to deal in anything resembling impartiality or actual facts; either that, or they've finally come clean and just given up trying to present anything which takes effort or non-partisan thought.

But this latest example places them firmly in the unintended self-parody bucket.

The above screen capture comes from a piece they did on Tuesday, 24th November 2009, regarding the 2012 Republican Party presidential candidature - and as you can see, they're struggling with simple maths - specifically percentages.

And so whilst Fox may be "4,000% behind Palin!" for the nomination, someone will simply have to break the news to them (pun intended) that, in total, you can only every have a maximum of 100% of anything - but as Fox report it above, they managed to poll six thirds of Republicans!

Impressive - that's a 100% margin of error! Way to go Faux!!

Of course none of this can help in their current battle for credibility after being shown, by Jon Stewart on 'The Daily Show', and others, to be fabricating news reportage, and taking a somewhat whimsical approach to using 'actual' film footage of the events they were purportedly covering. Embarrassingly, they managed to do the same thing twice in one week - to the point where the brass at Faux threatened anyone found guilty of any further 'breaches of accuracy' with being fired. Oops...

But, there is an upside here! At least we now know who conducts their polling and then collates Faux's poll statistics for them: Opinions Dynamic - the same guys who provide Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck et al with their teabagging figures...

Sometimes the comedy just writes itself.
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8 comments:

  1. So the total percentage available for candidates is 193%? You could look at things another way - maybe Fox news aren't working on the decimal scale. Maybe they have invented an alternative scale that is so clever that we can't understand it, and which means that 193% is the new 100%?

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  2. EEEK. Not sure what happened there..... it kept saying that posting had failed, and then posted five lots of gobbley gook representing 193% of your total comments so far.

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  3. Cosmic Navel Lint26 November 2009 at 11:53

    Nay probs Anne, the bogeyman's now been expunged! :)

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  4. Cosmic Navel Lint26 November 2009 at 12:16

    <span>Ah, right, yeah, in the same way as burnt-sienna is the new puce? Gottcha!  =-O ;) :-D </span>

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  5. Yep, in the same way that Sarah Palin is the new einstein ;)

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  6. :-D  Greetings Bren-- Just wanted you & Fox News to know my 4th grader son is available to help them
    with those pie charts!

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  7. Cosmic Navel Lint30 November 2009 at 12:04

    That you Elizabeth? After watching this Fox coverage, it looks like they could do with him! :)

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