Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Controlling the News Through Poor Infographics



The above image has been making the rounds on the ol' interwebs for the past couple of days. As you can see, it's a handy Fox News breakdown of who Republicans support for the next presidential run. And as you also might see, if you have 3rd-grade level math skills or higher, the pie chart adds up to 193%, an amazing feat.

This is a great example of not only the shitty, hurriedly-slapped togetherness of most everything the 24-hour news stations do, but also a great example of Fox' repeated "errors" that make their chosen politics and positions look better. Fresh off the flap over their twice in as many days doctoring crowd footage to make various Republicans look more popular than they really are, you now have this pie chart.

And sure, it could just be a stupid error of someone not knowing what they're doing, or it could be a conscious attempt to misuse graphics to make it look like all three of them are wildly popular. And granted I would like to think it was a failure, but we are, after all, in a nation where a large percentage of the population is insulted by the the teaching of scientific fact to their children, so I'm not too sure they would be that quick to notice obvious math errors...

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