David Smalley at Dogma Debate put out this tweet today:
Fact-Checking Site Finds Fox News Only Tells the Truth 18% of the Time http://t.co/wE7hgQYYgZ
— David Smalley (@davidcsmalley) November 20, 2014
I went and took a deeper look at the data the website has published. I agree that all news networks tell whatever they need to get the required ratings. I compared the FOXNews hosts with the MSNBC hosts from the website David Smalley referenced with the following results.
MSNBC Hosts | True | Mostly True | Half True | Mostly False | False | Pants on Fire | Total Statements | |
Mika | Berzinski | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Joe | Scarborough | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
Thomas | Roberts | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Jose | Diaz-Balart | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Tamaron | Hall | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Andrea | Mitchell | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Ronan | Farrow | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Joy | Reid | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Alex | Wagner | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Ed | Schultz | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 10 |
Al | Sharpton | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
Chris | Matthews | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 7 |
Chris | Hayes | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Rachel | Maddow | 3 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 23 |
Lawrence | Odonnell | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
Sum | 6 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 12 | 4 | 64 | |
Percent | 9% | 20% | 22% | 23% | 19% | 6% | 100% | |
Fox News Hosts | True | Mostly True | Half True | Mostly False | False | Pants on Fire | Total Statements | |
Megyn | Kelly | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Sean | Hannity | 3 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 12 |
Bill | Oreilly | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 16 |
Greg | Gutfeld | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Juan | Williams | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Dana | Perino | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Bob | Beckel | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
Kimberly | Guifoyle | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Ainsley | Earhart | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Heather | Childers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Brian | Kilmead | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Elisabeth | Hasselbeck | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Steve | Doocy | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Bill | Hemmer | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Martha | MacAllum | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Jenna | Lee | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Jon | Scott | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Sandra | Smith | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Gretchen | Carlson | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Shepard | Smith | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Neil | Cavuto | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Harris | Faulkner | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Sum | 8 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 17 | 3 | 45 | |
Percent | 18% | 16% | 13% | 9% | 38% | 7% | 100% |
As can be seen the total sample is small with some big names at Fox not even having one fact checked such as Neil Cavuto and Sheppard Smith. It also shows that they are not very different when it comes to honesty. Foxnews had 47% as half truth or above and MSNBC had 52%.
The article claims that they sampled 83 Fox claims and only 15 had some truth but have no supporting data. No criteria was given as to how they picked the claims. They also claimed that MSNBC had factual claims at a rate of 31% but do not tell us how many were completely true as they did Fox at 8%. My only conclusion is that they added claims by guests at least on the Fox side to get to the 83 claims (most probably politicians).
The website says this:
“Though I’m sure any conservative who might run across this article, or the Punditfact profiles, would simply dismiss the results as “liberally biased lies.” – See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/fact-checking-site-finds-fox-news-tells-truth-18-percent-time/#sthash.ntzXMdAP.dpuf
Yeah, I dismiss the findings but based on at least some research I did on your site. I wonder how many claims are made in a day on these stations. Probably a lot more that 45 or 83 which they claim is a large sampling.
So look at the numbers for yourself and decide. And yeah in this day and age where message is everything above truth I am reluctant to believe that a site named “Forward Progressive” is going to find Fox as anything but dishonest just as I would distrust a conservative biased site.