Shall we call it 'OpinionGate' just to make sure it's a full blown 'conspiracy'?...
By Brad Friedman on 12/8/2009, 1:30pm PT  

[Now updated at end of article.]

Notice anything wrong with these Fox "News" reported poll numbers?

That's right, according to Fox, 120 percent of Americans have an opinion on global warming issues in the wake of stolen emails from climate scientists, and 94 percent of them believe it's at least "somewhat likely" that those scientists falsified research while 26 percent feel otherwise. That's tea bag math for ya.

Simon Malloy at Media Matters offers his best guess on how Fox "News" came up with their falsified numbers, though it's also worth noting that out of 120 percent or more of Fox "News" viewers, not a single one of them has so far been able to identify, at least to us, a single stolen email that demonstrates the science of global warming is in any way inaccurate...

Fox, of course, has a very rich history of "mistakes" on on-screen graphics that, inevitably end up supporting Rightwingers and/or hurting Democrats in some fashion or another. (Here's just a few and some others, though if anybody has a link to a more comprehensive page out there, we'll update this link.) The BRAD BLOG was the first to report on one of their most infamous, when they labeled Republican Rep. Mark Foley as a "D" after it had been revealed that he sent sexually explicit emails to Congressional pages in the days leading up to the 2006 Election.

More recently, Fox has been caught falsifying video footage on the Hannity show to exaggerate the size of a Tea Bag demonstration in D.C. and using 2008 campaign footage to deceptively suggest huge crowds at book signing events for the celebrity community organizer Sarah Palin in the wake of her aborted first term as Alaska's Governor.

Fox claims to have recently instituted a "zero tolerance" policy in response to such "mistakes" following the latest (of many similar) embarrassments, though we'd not advising holding your breath waiting for someone to actually be held accountable for this one, or any of them frankly.

Addendum... As we prepared to run this item, this just in, yet another new Fox "flub that conveniently hurts Democrats" as they "reduce Obama's bank bailout savings by 99 percent". See RAW STORY for details...

UPDATE 12/9/09: Well, so much for Fox's "zero tolerance" policy. Apparently, zero also has a different value in tea bag math. So does "tolerance".

Politico followed up, and Fox, like all liars and losers when caught, made excuses, rather than admit their error:

Lauren Petterson, executive producer of Fox & Friends, told POLITICO that she sees no error in the graphic. And for that reason, there will be no reprimand of staff under the "zero tolerance" policy.

"We were just talking about three interesting pieces of information from Rasmussen," Petterson said. "We didn't put on the screen that it added up to 100 percent."

That is, of course, nonsense, as Eric Boehlert offers context for the graphic in question, showing just how full of crap Petterson's claim is. What a surprise.

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