Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Saturday, October 02, 2004

When Fake News Gets Real, Real News Gets Faker

Do follow the unfolding (as Jesse Taylor puts it) "Cuticlegate" story at Josh Marshall's website, wherein Carl Cameron made up fake quotes attributed to Kerry which were posted on Fox News' website. Then there's the AP photo of Bush and Kerry shaking hands at Thursday's debate which was supposedly taken at an angle that makes Bush look suspiciously taller than he is (Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing compared it with this one from AFP); the media is swearing the AP pic wasn't doctored. And Brian Westley sends me this e-mail concerning the debate:
Wall Street Journal Online Poll Uses Fraudulent Bar Graph
The Wall Street Journal, which ought to know how to draw something as business-related as a simple bar graph, is either colossally inept or committing a transparent fraud. Go ahead and plug this if you want, their "poll" page is still drawing ridiculous bars. It's possible it's the result of something not being zeroed out, but the bars don't match the totals in any case.
Here's a jpg of what the WSJ drew for the "current results" of 1730 for Bush, 5329 for Kerry, and 389 for Tie when I voted. Kerry's bar graph, which should be three times the height of Bush's bar, is just 84 pixels compared to 60!! What the graph dishonestly shows you is Bush barely behind Kerry, with a huge number of people voting it a tie (and people don't look at numbers, they look at the bar graph). This is utter, incompetent fraud by the Wall Street Journal.
While the Cameron fiasco is certainly disturbing, I think many folks are far more influenced by visual subliminals like those perpetrated by the "Bush not short" picture and the abovementioned graph. Just something we should all be watching for.

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