‘Pants On Fire’: Analysis Shows 60% Of Fox News ‘Facts’ Are Really Lies

Fox News leads the major TV networks in broadcasting lies, but that doesn’t mean CNN or MSNBC are far behind.
By MintPress News Desk | May 12, 2015

MINNEAPOLIS — Analysis of Fox News suggests that the TV news network is a leader in lying to the American public, beating out CNN and MSNBC for the amount of falsehoods broadcasted.

The analysis comes from Punditfact, a partnership between the Tampa Bay Times and Politifact.com, which maintains scorecards on the accuracy of major TV news networks. As of January, about 60 percent of facts reported by Fox News were false.

Criticizing the accuracy of Fox News is not a new pursuit — comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert built substantial portions of their career out of spotlighting the network’s lies and misdirection. Stewart is so well-known as an opponent that he made headlines in March for admitting Fox had actually been correct in one, specific instance.

Fox News’ falsehoods gained particular notoriety in the wake of Islamic-extremist terrorist attacks in Europe earlier this year, when Fox began claiming that neighborhoods and even entire cities were off-limits to non-Muslims. Fans of Fox continue to repeat the claim, even though it’s been debunked by everyone from local residents of these regions to British Prime Minister David Cameron. The controversy gave rise to the Twitter hashtag #foxnewsfacts, which is still popular today.

Fox News’ penchant for inaccuracy has give rise to popular urban legends, debunked by Snopes.com, suggesting that Fox won the right to lie in court — a claim based on a court case that involved a local Fox affiliate — and that the network was banned in Canada for lying.

Punditfact divides Fox’s on-air falsehoods into categories, from claims that are mostly false (21 percent), those that were completely false (31 percent), and the most blatant lies, which are termed “Pants On Fire” (9 percent).

But Fox News is not the only network blurring the lines between fact and fiction. A combined scorecard for MSNBC and NBC shows that Punditfact found 44 percent of the news broadcast by those networks was at least “mostly false” or worse. CNN got the best grades on their scorecard, with 80 percent of their reports deemed at least “half true.”

Punditfact began maintaining these scorecards in 2014, and their January analysis shows that MSNBC and CNN are improving their truthfulness score with time. Fox, however, is not improving — in fact, it’s getting worse.

Punditfact warns that these scorecards are based only on analysis of selected claims, not a statistically accurate survey: “We use our news judgment to pick the facts we’re going to check, so we certainly don’t fact-check everything. And we don’t fact-check the five network groups evenly.”

Even so, the Punditfact score cards show that while it is a myth that courts upheld Fox News’ right to lie, it can hardly be considered a reliable news outfit. Despite this fact, Fox routinely ranks as the top TV news network in terms of viewership, based on Nielsen statistics, causing irreparable harm to public perception of events.

In March, Jon Stewart compared this effect to blindness caused by a solar eclipse.

“It’s recommended you only watch Fox through a tiny pinhole poked in a piece of cardboard,” quipped Stewart. “You can’t look directly at Fox. It will indelibly burn your soul!”




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U.S. has conducted air strikes.

U.S. does not conduct air strikes.

Either way they are covered.

#FoxNewsFacts

more facts from MSM.

yep,Jon Stewart is Real News-Journalism!

Well I would be interested in the 'facts' they researched. For example in the screenshot were they discussing no military action against ISIS...IN SYRIA? The graphic states the bombing sorties IN IRAQ.

If this is based on a breaking news stories, then if Fox says "There's an active shooter in a warehouse in Garland Texas, and it turns out to be in Rowlett, (a few miles east) was that a LIE?

I think this needs some finer context. Does Fox come off as a the "There's a Muslim behind every bush" network? Yeah, at times they do. However if you don't even cover stories like most networks ignore the scandalous behavior of the Obama ruling junta, is that any better?

Sometime in the 70's news stopped being about the facts, and all about the 'spin'. I'm sure the Vietnam war and Watergate had a lot to do with that shift. News shows in the past simply said a dog bit a man, because that's what happened. Now the story includes information from neighbors as to the character of the victim, if he deserved the bite, if the dog was suffering from a doggie PTSD, and what the local dog whisperer has to say. It announces that the station will do an expose next week on whether or not the government is doing enough to stop dog bites, provides enough money for PTSD puppies, and if people bitten by dogs should have to by law attend a doggie harassment workshop.

sounds like an MSNBC fan with nothing to do wrote this...

When did Rupert Murdoch
hire Wolfe Blitzer?

Seems we've been on a downward spiral since the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow and their age group; back when it was the news and only the news and the OPed pieces were rarely handed out.

Yes, Tomato...there once was a time in America when you could count on the NEWS for nothing more then just the TRUTH and Nothing but the TRUTH



Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low
Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009

Overview
The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

http://www.people-press.org/2009/09/13/press-accuracy-rating-hits-two-decade-low/

reminds me of the baltimore riot photos, that were actually from Venezuela. none of these "news" companies can be trusted anymore. they all lie while trying to promote their own ideas and agendas.

Yipper, rather pathetic; when the scum rags used to be so easily identified as the 'National Enquirer/Star Magazine' and no one worth their salt ever quoted anything from either of those rag papers!

Now we get our daily dose via our Entertainment segments on our local channels during news time: there's TMZ/ET/all the talking heads at Faux Media and every major news show has their own Hollywood cookie cutter talking heads spewing news that sells - but little substance and who cares about the FACTS!

Back in high school journalism --- {wayyyy back in the stone age} I think that was called 'Yellow Journalism' or 'Yellow Press' and you certainly didn't want to get accused of either one!

Some idiot, whose name I refuse to mention,
urged journalists and reporters to "become the story",
rather than simply reporting the news.
The idiot labeled it, " gonzo journalism".

its best to watch local news and then catch cable while careful to weed out the opinions from the facts

though it gets harder as fewer people seem to know the difference,,,

i know this is off topic, but everytime u post something i get the urge to go watch house of 1000 corpses hahaha.

back to the topic, it sounds frickin crazy but who would ever think internet news would be more trustworthy than MSM tv news.

Devil's Rejects... Also a good movie.

On topic:
Never just trust one avenue of news.
Take as much in as you can.

Hell... For once, I'm actually in agreement with msharmony .

yea i have seen devils rejects as well, both good movies.

back on topic

i prefer local news over cable news but i prefer internet over both of them. i do watch all 3 though. like you said take in as much as you can, and try to sort out the garbage. yea ms harmony has a good point once in a while aha

What's next? Lying politicians? Corporations not being altruistic?
Dogs and cats living together?