Fox News and Error Checking (from Wisconsin thread)

[Dalton]

Deliberately flipping the results of a national poll to show 66% favouring the stripping of collective barganing rights from public workers when in fact it was 66% opposed goes far beyond "being up front about their news analysis being conservative". That is outright falsehood. Like many of the other examples that have already been catalogued just in this one thread. It's to the point where Fox should be charged with fraud for calling their programming "news".

Gotta break in here to actually defend FNC (shock, horror). Patrick, do you have any proof that it was deliberate? Working from behind the scenes, I know from experience that it's very, very easy to make errors like that. Most are caught before air, but sometimes shit happens. It's not like they ran with it all day.

[Serafina]

Deliberately flipping the results of a national poll to show 66% favouring the stripping of collective barganing rights from public workers when in fact it was 66% opposed goes far beyond "being up front about their news analysis being conservative". That is outright falsehood. Like many of the other examples that have already been catalogued just in this one thread. It's to the point where Fox should be charged with fraud for calling their programming "news".

Gotta break in here to actually defend FNC (shock, horror). Patrick, do you have any proof that it was deliberate? Working from behind the scenes, I know from experience that it's very, very easy to make errors like that. Most are caught before air, but sometimes shit happens. It's not like they ran with it all day.

I am certain that it is impossible to find any proof in this particular case, but things like this happen to Fox A LOT. It might be a genuine accident, but the suspicion that it is deliberate is hardly far-fetched.

[The Yosemite Bear]

like accidentially putting a (D) next to any (R) politician who gets their foot caught all the way in a scandal?

[Dalton]

Do you guys have any idea how easy it is to screw up a graphic?

[Thanas]

Yeah, but when that graphic gets displayed over several hours like in the Mike Foley (D) event, then it kinda gets hard to defend. It is also sad how this only ever happens when it is something negative about the persons, and Fox has been caught photoshopping pictures before (like when they gave the two critics yellow teeth).

[Simon_Jester]

I think the most favorable interpretation possible is that Fox tolerates and even encourages extreme sloppiness as long as that sloppiness serves the party line. And that can blend in seamlessly with conscious falsification, like photoshopping images persistently swapping (R) for (D) if and only if a Republican is accused of some crime. Because what happens is that you develop this indifference to the truth- that it's okay to lie so long as it serves the greater good, and the truth is less important than the official version of the truth as promoted by the Party.

A normal news organization asks: "Did the guy who took these videos of a charitable organization getting involved with prostitution fake the whole scene?" And they say "Good question, let's hold off until we dig a little deeper." Fox News looks at it and says "Who knows? Who cares? But wow does this sure make the organization look like shit! Let's air it, and we can mumble a retraction later if it turns out to be bullshit. Mission accomplished."

We see this on the other side of the line too, but it tends to occur on a smaller scale because the Democrats don't have any media organization that serves them as well as Fox News serves the Republicans. On the left it's more likely to happen in the blogosphere and such.

[Dalton]

Yeah, but when that graphic gets displayed over several hours like in the Mike Foley (D) event, then it kinda gets hard to defend. It is also sad how this only ever happens when it is something negative about the persons, and Fox has been caught photoshopping pictures before (like when they gave the two critics yellow teeth).

Mistakes on automated banners can be easy to miss, especially when it's only one person producing them and nobody is doing due diligence in checking graphics. Additionally, it becomes even tougher when it's on a package on tape, since there's no front-line operator spot-checking banners before they air. When someone notices a fuckup like that in the control room, it is a big deal.

I'm unaware of the yellow-teeth incident. It's not common to photoshop pictures in that fashion (in fact, it's illegal since it can be construed as slander). That's a failure of journalistic ethics that falls on the producer that ordered the modification.

I think the most favorable interpretation possible is that Fox tolerates and even encourages extreme sloppiness as long as that sloppiness serves the party line. And that can blend in seamlessly with conscious falsification, like photoshopping images persistently swapping (R) for (D) if and only if a Republican is accused of some crime. Because what happens is that you develop this indifference to the truth- that it's okay to lie so long as it serves the greater good, and the truth is less important than the official version of the truth as promoted by the Party.

Unsubstantiated bullshit. There is a sharp division between Editorial and Production. Sloppiness is not tolerated or encouraged among the Production side, because we do our best to make the technical production look as good as possible. Furthermore, not all television graphics are photoshopped, since a lot of it is extremely time-sensitive. Do you know how many lower third banners are created literally seconds before they air?

A normal news organization asks: "Did the guy who took these videos of a charitable organization getting involved with prostitution fake the whole scene?" And they say "Good question, let's hold off until we dig a little deeper." Fox News looks at it and says "Who knows? Who cares? But wow does this sure make the organization look like shit! Let's air it, and we can mumble a retraction later if it turns out to be bullshit. Mission accomplished."

All news organizations fall into the trap of playing unvetted video just so they can scoop the competition. It's not necessarily a function of political bias. I am well aware of FNC's reputation, but not all mistakes are examples of some master plan or vast right-wing conspiracy.

We see this on the other side of the line too, but it tends to occur on a smaller scale because the Democrats don't have any media organization that serves them as well as Fox News serves the Republicans. On the left it's more likely to happen in the blogosphere and such.

Do you have anything to back up this assertion?

[Simon_Jester]

A normal news organization asks: "Did the guy who took these videos of a charitable organization getting involved with prostitution fake the whole scene?" And they say "Good question, let's hold off until we dig a little deeper." Fox News looks at it and says "Who knows? Who cares? But wow does this sure make the organization look like shit! Let's air it, and we can mumble a retraction later if it turns out to be bullshit. Mission accomplished."

All news organizations fall into the trap of playing unvetted video just so they can scoop the competition. It's not necessarily a function of political bias. I am well aware of FNC's reputation, but not all mistakes are examples of some master plan or vast right-wing conspiracy.

I don't think Fox News coverage reflects a master plan. I think it's something much more... grassroots. But I screwed up explaining this before, and spoke of a pet theory of mine, a mental model of how I'd expect the world to work, as if it were a bunch of hard facts.

To describe the theory clearly, as a theory, I'm going to start with the following propositions:

-FNC was created by people who wanted to use it to air news, and who sincerely believe that the 'real' news will predictably favor the right.
-The company itself invokes the legal argument that it is not obliged to tell the truth while presenting its content as "news" since it is in fact an entertainment company, not a news agency.

What I would expect and predict, on that basis, is not a systematic case of every story being turned into right-wing propaganda by master planners. What I would expect is for the individual biases of the sort of people who sign on with such a company to contaminate their news coverage. People who espouse right-wing views (on the air and in the office) would be expected to be more likely to survive and thrive in the company. People who are willing to avoid asking awkward questions about stories that favor the right, likewise, would be expected to survive and thrive.

Such people are not necessarily sitting at their desks scheming about how to spread political propaganda all day. There might be a few people like that tucked away in the bowels of the company offices, but there's no reason to expect them to be any more common in FNC than their equivalents are in any other major media organization. What the average person whose continued tenure at Fox is likely to be, is someone who is predisposed to believe a version of events consistent with a right-wing spin.

For an example of how this thought process actually works, look what happens when someone posts a Republican-parodying Onion article to this forum. Note that certain people don't get the joke, or say "I had to double-check to see that this was an Onion article" or "It's all so terribly true." This same mindset can apply on the right. If and when it does, we would expect and predict that people will be less critical of accepting claims when those claims favor the right.

Given that, we would expect and predict less caution, diligence, and self-examination among such people when their statements favor the right. This will apply both to production and to the editors, but in different respects.

The production side, which you refer to, will focus on making high quality visual graphics, because that's their job. But I expect and predict that when Production is full of people who feel that it is their duty to promote a right-wing agenda, and who strongly, sincerely believe in that agenda, they will be less careful about content which favors the right. So when someone swaps numbers on a graph, or swaps an (R) for a (D), which can happen anywhere for the reasons you describe, I would expect and predict that the mistake is more likely to get caught when it goes against the producers' biases, and less likely to get caught when it supports the producers' biases.

Thus, I expect and predict that a disproportionate number of Fox News' perfectly natural production mistakes (such as "Mike Foley (D)"), will be the ones which favor the right, and therefore sneak past the production team by exploiting their cognitive biases. This will tend to affect images, blurbs, and so on. It wouldn't always mean a deliberate mistake has been made as part of a planned propaganda drive; it could just mean someone screwed up and didn't catch it because they weren't thinking about it. Those misplaced (D)'s can be Freudian slips or unexamined errors as easily- more easily- than they can be deliberate errors.

In any case, totally separate from this, we have the editorial policy. But here too, I expect and predict similar effects: the editors will be less cautious about saying things which promote a right-wing spin. "Planned Parenthood caught assisting pimp!" would be more likely to make the news on Fox than "National Right To Life caught assisting pimp!" Because, once again, the crappy story can be expected and predicted to have a better chance of slipping through the radar without being searched and found out as a lie. Not because of a systematic right-wing conspiracy, but because of very human cognitive biases: the assumption that because it feels like the sort of thing the Bad Guys would do, it must have happened.

Moreover, I expect and predict that, because of the same cognitive biases among the staff at Fox News, mistakes of this time will be punished less harshly when they are caught: that you will get in more trouble for accidentally saying the majority opposes a Republican initiative and supports a Democratic initiative than the other way around.

This, I expect and predict, creates a vicious cycle that greatly hurts Fox's ability to be objective in their news coverage. It selects for people who strongly believe right-wing spin, selects for people who are harder on the left than on the right, and creates sheltered niches for people whose failures to provide accurate coverage (either through honest mistakes or through intent) would get them in trouble elsewhere.

So far, this is a theoretical prediction, a model of what Fox News might become given what I know about who created it and why.

I retract any claim that this pet theory of mine matches reality; I leave the question of whether it matches reality purely up to the reader. If you wish to dispute the logic of my prediction, or point out that it is blatantly contradicted by the evidence, fire away.

We see this on the other side of the line too, but it tends to occur on a smaller scale because the Democrats don't have any media organization that serves them as well as Fox News serves the Republicans. On the left it's more likely to happen in the blogosphere and such.

Do you have anything to back up this assertion?

Other than the purely negative evidence that I am unaware of any major news organization managing to rack up as impressive a tally of slip-ups, accidents, misrepresentations, and outright lies than Fox News, no.

And, again, that is negative evidence. I might be wrong. Indeed, I sort of hope I am wrong. Am I wrong?

[The Yosemite Bear]

however Rob, after years of these mistakes happening so often, and getting forgiven for this one begins to wonder about the organization, are they just not caring or are they purposly doing this as part of a campaign of disinformation/doing things with the lowest cost/oversight possible...

[Dalton]

So far, this is a theoretical prediction, a model of what Fox News might become given what I know about who created it and why.

I retract any claim that this pet theory of mine matches reality; I leave the question of whether it matches reality purely up to the reader. If you wish to dispute the logic of my prediction, or point out that it is blatantly contradicted by the evidence, fire away.

As a thought exercise, it's intriguing. But the end result of such a theory would be a clear and obvious agenda in terms of how stories are covered and analyzed, not a fucking error on a graphic or an unvetted video making air. You're thinking way too small. The people who are in charge of content and programming don't send a note down to the Graphics PA entering automation codes into the rundown: "Psst, hey, make that a D instead of an R. If the director asks, tell him I said so!" They set out a long-term plan for the look and feel of the network's coverage. The day-to-day shit is small potatoes and is not worth over-analyzing to the degree some people tend to over-analyze it. Sometimes a fuckup is just a fuckup.

And, again, that is negative evidence. I might be wrong. Indeed, I sort of hope I am wrong. Am I wrong?

I don't know if you're wrong, but you don't know if you're right. Mistakes happen every single day. News organizations do the best they can to prevent these errors, but mistakes happen. A bad graphic is the least of it, especially when a correction is issued.

however Rob, after years of these mistakes happening so often, and getting forgiven for this one begins to wonder about the organization, are they just not caring or are they purposly doing this as part of a campaign of disinformation/doing things with the lowest cost/oversight possible...

Live news is tough. If you had any idea how much work went into one hour - just one hour - of programming, you'd be flabbergasted. There are many, many points of failure.


I'm no fan of Fox News. I think they're fundamentally dishonest in their approach to producing television. But keep in mind that a bad graphic here or a typo there is not enough to convict a news organization of a political bias. You have to look at the whole oeuvre of programming, from dayside to primetime. See how their stories are covered. How their news cycle flows. How the stories are written. That's what'll give you an idea of what they represent, not a mistake on a graphic.

[The Yosemite Bear]

the only problem is when the cowinkidinks just pile up like cars in a Robert Zemekis film, it starts looking suspicious.

[Dalton]

the only problem is when the cowinkidinks just pile up like cars in a Robert Zemekis film, it starts looking suspicious.

It's still circumstantial. You can't prove that all incidents of errors are part of an agenda.

[Akumz Razor]

I work for a podunk small-market ABC affiliate and we have big deal all-staff meetings over much smaller on air errors. Fox News is supposed to be the #1 news outlet in the country. Either they're doing this stuff on purpose, their management doesn't care, or their entire graphics dept. is comprised solely of interns.

[Professor Dire]

I thought this thread was about the protests in Wisconsin, Not about how
staggeringly inept Fox News is at presenting the news 'err' I mean "Entertainment".

Can we get back on track here in this thread please. If you want to discuss Fox News'
credibility or lack there of please start a "Fox News: The Discussion" thread.

That said.
How is it going in Wisconsin? I ask because I am concerned for folks due to the weather.
It's snowing like a M-F here in Nebraska, and Wisconsin usually gets more snow fall than
we do here in Cornlandia.





>>Edit: Corrected spelling and grammar errors.

[Simon_Jester]

As a thought exercise, it's intriguing. But the end result of such a theory would be a clear and obvious agenda in terms of how stories are covered and analyzed, not a fucking error on a graphic or an unvetted video making air. You're thinking way too small. The people who are in charge of content and programming don't send a note down to the Graphics PA entering automation codes into the rundown: "Psst, hey, make that a D instead of an R. If the director asks, tell him I said so!" They set out a long-term plan for the look and feel of the network's coverage. The day-to-day shit is small potatoes and is not worth over-analyzing to the degree some people tend to over-analyze it. Sometimes a fuckup is just a fuckup.

What I'm getting at is that if there is a consistent pattern in the fuckups, it is evidence of something subtle: the biases of the agency (and the kind of people who can keep a job in it) messing with their ability to detect fuckups. The degree to which they know and care whether what they say is true shrinks when what they're saying lines up with their biases.

It is not a sign of network executives saying "Yo, fuck up in ways that make Democrats look bad!" It is a sign of network executives not caring very much about fuckups, as long as they make Democrats look bad. There's a difference.

I wouldn't even be talking about this were there not plenty of of other evidence suggesting larger-scale, more deliberate biases. This is about the more subtle poisons that get introduced into a 'news' agency when they take it as their mission to broadcast news with a slant.

[Dalton]

I thought this thread was about the protests in Wisconsin, Not about how
staggeringly inept Fox News is at presenting the news 'err' I mean "Entertainment".

Can we get back on track here in this thread please. If you want to discuss Fox News'
credibility or lack there of please start a "Fox News: The Discussion" thread.

I do not appreciate being backseat-moderated by a newbie.

What I'm getting at is that if there is a consistent pattern in the fuckups, it is evidence of something subtle: the biases of the agency (and the kind of people who can keep a job in it) messing with their ability to detect fuckups. The degree to which they know and care whether what they say is true shrinks when what they're saying lines up with their biases.

It is not a sign of network executives saying "Yo, fuck up in ways that make Democrats look bad!" It is a sign of network executives not caring very much about fuckups, as long as they make Democrats look bad. There's a difference.

I wouldn't even be talking about this were there not plenty of of other evidence suggesting larger-scale, more deliberate biases. This is about the more subtle poisons that get introduced into a 'news' agency when they take it as their mission to broadcast news with a slant.

The way you phrase your argument, it makes it sound like these same execs are responsible for finding these errors in the first place and deliberately ignoring them. They are not concerned with day to day operations. Furthermore, your theory requires a large number of people who are "in" on it, from the Executive Producer all the way down to the script PA and from the Director all the way down to the freelance Prompter operator. There are at least a dozen people in a control room at any given time, aside from all the stage crew, lighting personnel and other technical operators that work on the show. If there was some conspiracy to produce mistakes deliberately and then claim otherwise, wouldn't we have heard from a few more whistleblowers by now?

EDIT: I just realized I strawmanned your argument. The "subtle poison" thing also doesn't jive; you're not going to ever have a crew that's straight-across right-leaning. I fail to see too how working for a network that has a slant is going to impair an ability to detect mistakes unless you're a knee-jerk reactionary.

[Simon_Jester]

What I'm getting at is that if there is a consistent pattern in the fuckups, it is evidence of something subtle: the biases of the agency (and the kind of people who can keep a job in it) messing with their ability to detect fuckups. The degree to which they know and care whether what they say is true shrinks when what they're saying lines up with their biases.

It is not a sign of network executives saying "Yo, fuck up in ways that make Democrats look bad!" It is a sign of network executives not caring very much about fuckups, as long as they make Democrats look bad. There's a difference.

I wouldn't even be talking about this were there not plenty of of other evidence suggesting larger-scale, more deliberate biases. This is about the more subtle poisons that get introduced into a 'news' agency when they take it as their mission to broadcast news with a slant.

The way you phrase your argument, it makes it sound like these same execs are responsible for finding these errors in the first place and deliberately ignoring them. They are not concerned with day to day operations. Furthermore, your theory requires a large number of people who are "in" on it, from the Executive Producer all the way down to the script PA and from the Director all the way down to the freelance Prompter operator. There are at least a dozen people in a control room at any given time, aside from all the stage crew, lighting personnel and other technical operators that work on the show. If there was some conspiracy to produce mistakes deliberately and then claim otherwise, wouldn't we have heard from a few more whistleblowers by now?

EDIT: I just realized I strawmanned your argument. The "subtle poison" thing also doesn't jive; you're not going to ever have a crew that's straight-across right-leaning. I fail to see too how working for a network that has a slant is going to impair an ability to detect mistakes unless you're a knee-jerk reactionary.

What I'd expect is for it to affect the percentages, the odds of mistakes. It's not some black-white conspiracy thing, OK? Please try to understand that. There is no conspiracy, or at least no conspiracy to commit petty retarded errors. Petty retarded errors are a symptom, not a deliberate planned consequence, of the way Fox operates.

It's like this. Suppose that three (or two, or five, or one, or seventeen, it doesn't matter) people have the ability to spot a mistake in the graphics before it goes on the air. Each of them has a certain chance to spot the mistake, go "whoah, that's dumb, let's fix it."

If a large fraction of these people are right-wing ideologues, OR are simply people whose commitment to journalistic integrity is weak, then those specific people will be less likely to spot (or care about) errors. Especially errors which promote the bias the entire corporate culture is encouraging and promoting.

Thus, suppose we have three errors. One makes a Democrat look bad, one makes a Republican look bad, and one is neutral (such as showing a picture of snow on a weather segment when one is talking about rain).

A normal news channel would, ideally, have an equal chance of spotting and correcting each of the three errors. A biased news channel will not. Because if there are three guys who might catch the mistake, and one of them is biased and tends to disregard mistakes that fit his biases... when the mistake fits his bias, there are only two people left to look for it. Thus, errors that fit that third guy's biases are more likely to get past the team's radar. This is true even if the other two guys are free of bias.

Because remember, each person may miss the error. To make a simplistic math example, say that Larry, Moe, and Curly all have an 80% chance of spotting a mistake, and a 20% chance of missing one, each. If all three of them are looking for it, the odds of the mistake getting through are (0.2^3) equals 0.8%. If only two of them are looking for it, the odds increase to (0.2^2) = 4%. If one of them is looking but not looking very hard, the risk of a mistake slipping under the stooges' radar is somewhere between 0.8% and 4%.

In the extreme case where Curly doesn't even bother to do critical examination or fact-checking of segments that support his biases... there will be five times more mistakes in the segments that support his biases than there are in the segments that don't. And all it takes is one guy to do this. This does not require a vast conspiracy of people to be in on this, as long as Curly manages to keep his job without being fired for his failure to spot mistakes (which, it must be remembered, are all mistakes that Larry and Moe didn't spot either).

Thus, a company which tends to encourage bias among its ranks, and hires even a modest-but-significant fraction of ideologues or people who view their job as producing entertainment and not journalism, will tend to make more mistakes that support the collective, average, in-statistical-terms bias of the company than mistakes that oppose the bias.

[Dalton]

Simon, this theory of yours is interesting, but I'd like to see some studies that political bias would make it less likely for someone to notice errors that agree with their point of view.

[SirNitram]

I think the biggest problem with Fox is not any of these things; it's that it serves as a direct conduit between 'news channels' and right wing loonies. Consider the ACORN 'controversy'. A fake video by a hustler gets on because he has a connection to Breibart, and then the news channels hype it. This has of course, had a much larger impact that; consider Beck and now the founder of RedState, getting hired by national news channels, simply because everyone now wants to scoop everyone else on the next 'story' from the far right.

[jcow79]

So do the hosts get their information from the graphic as well? Because the host stated the same statistic. It seems to me like if it was a simple graphic error, the hosts comments wouldn't have matched the graphic. So both the graphic designer and the host recieved the same bad information.

Here's the video, not just the graphic
Link

Edit* adding text transcript for anyone that can't view the video.

: I think Gallup, a relatively mainstream poll, has a differing view. And here is the question that was posed, should you take away--will you favor or are you in disfavor of taking away collective bargaining when it comes to salaries for government workers? Sixty-one percent in favor of taking it away. Thirty-three percent oppose. Six percent up in the air. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/23/11]

[lance]

So do the hosts get their information from the graphic as well? Because the host stated the same statistic. It seems to me like if it was a simple graphic error, the hosts comments wouldn't have matched the graphic. So both the graphic designer and the host recieved the same bad information.

Here's the video, not just the graphic
Link

Edit* adding text transcript for anyone that can't view the video.

: I think Gallup, a relatively mainstream poll, has a differing view. And here is the question that was posed, should you take away--will you favor or are you in disfavor of taking away collective bargaining when it comes to salaries for government workers? Sixty-one percent in favor of taking it away. Thirty-three percent oppose. Six percent up in the air. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/23/11]

Didn't the host correct himself later on the program?

Edit Granted in the vein of a 3 second blurb vs an interview is pretty shady.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon, this theory of yours is interesting, but I'd like to see some studies that political bias would make it less likely for someone to notice errors that agree with their point of view.

I would really have to go digging for this; I can try.

But I'm surprised this seems implausible to you; it's a fairly straightforward case of confirmation bias- the tendency to find things more plausible when they square with what we already (consciously or subconsciously) believe. And the confirmation bias is well established in the literature, throughout a wide range of areas.

EDIT: And I'm not talking about huge gross errors that any sane person would spot like "liberals eat babies." I'm talking about stuff like "the majority of the population thinks unions are bad." Well, if you think unions are bad, why on Earth would it strike you as incongruous that most people agree with you? Unless you're used to the idea that you hold a lot of opinions which a majority of (less educated/less enlightened/less whatever) people oppose, you would expect a majority of people to agree with you, because your own views are (by definition) just common sense.

So if someone who already thinks unions are bad, or very bad, sees someone write down something like "studies show 57% of people think unions are bad," why would they question that? Unless they reflexively fact check everything, which very few people do, it's all too likely to slip past their radar. Hell, I would be hard-pressed to refute that off the top of my head myself, and I like unions.

[Eleas]

But I'm surprised this seems implausible to you; it's a fairly straightforward case of confirmation bias- the tendency to find things more plausible when they square with what we already (consciously or subconsciously) believe. And the confirmation bias is well established in the literature, throughout a wide range of areas.

Confirmation bias is all well and good. But why would it stop there? If you have an environment where any outrageous polemic about the Opposition is rewarded and pushing the envelope in that regard nets you favours, how long do you really think it would be before intentional falsehood takes off?

The step after that is when the exaggerations and distortions come home to roost; when the entire environment is so saturated with strident and uniform rhetoric that people begin to internalize it. For instance, L. Ron Hubbard started the Church of Scientology with the express and frank intention of fleecing idiots off of money. Thirty years after that, he was utterly convinced that his manufactured religion was Truth.

[Dalton]

Simon, this theory of yours is interesting, but I'd like to see some studies that political bias would make it less likely for someone to notice errors that agree with their point of view.

I would really have to go digging for this; I can try.

But I'm surprised this seems implausible to you; it's a fairly straightforward case of confirmation bias- the tendency to find things more plausible when they square with what we already (consciously or subconsciously) believe. And the confirmation bias is well established in the literature, throughout a wide range of areas.

Not implausible, just not supported. You have to remember though that as someone in the trenches I have a difficult time accepting your confirmation bias theory, just based on personal experience.

So do the hosts get their information from the graphic as well? Because the host stated the same statistic. It seems to me like if it was a simple graphic error, the hosts comments wouldn't have matched the graphic. So both the graphic designer and the host recieved the same bad information.

It's from the same source. That segment was written by a producer, who ordered a graphic to go with the story. If the producer had bad data, it would be disseminated to both the host via the script (who more or less goes by the prompter) and the designer (who does what they're told).

[Simon_Jester]

Not implausible, just not supported. You have to remember though that as someone in the trenches I have a difficult time accepting your confirmation bias theory, just based on personal experience.

Could you expand on why your personal experience leads you to think I am mistaken?