Remind me why anyone looks to Faux Newz for reliability or accuracy?

Not that sane, rational or intelligent people actually watch Fox for real news. Which does, of course, explain how and why its ratings supposedly are at an all-time high these days, as a seemingly unstoppable plague of ignorance, paranoia and stoopid spreads through America. Think Progress has the details on just one example of Faux Newz intentionally twisting statistics and spreading misinformation to try and advance its far-right agenda:

FoxNews.com, the official website of the Fox News anti-Obama propaganda network, is promoting what it calls the “Obama Change Index.” The index purports to chart “the impact of policies promised by President Obama,” and conveniently graphs Obama’s progress on a scale of 0-700. It appears that Fox’s “change index” is tabulated by asking one Democratic, Republican, and Independent pundit what they think of Obama on 7 different issues: budget, stimulus, homeland security, foreign/military affairs, social issues, dealing with Congress, law and justice. While Obama’s favorable ratings have been going up recently, Fox News’ index unsurprisingly shows Obama tanking. Reddit user KingBeetle writes of the index, “I can’t even figure out what it means, but for some reason this week, Obama is down 271 points.” It’s now 282 points:

A couple of interesting observations from the “Obama Change Index”: On the week of 9/16/09, Obama scored a zero on Homeland Security for no apparent reason. Similarly, Obama scored a zero on “social issues” the week of 6/30/09 because he “tried to placate the gay community.”

“Fair and Balanced” must mean something entirely else in the loonisphere wherein Faux Newz inhabits.

(via @todayspolitics)
Technorati tags: Fox News · Obama Change Index · Think Progress · Barack Obama