Twitter Is In A Tizzy Over A Faulty Fox News Graphic
A Fox News host is once again under Twitter fire after blatantly false information was shared during a segment on "Unfiltered," a Saturday night program on the network, which claims it was a mistake (per The Daily Beast).
According to the show's description, "Dan Bongino exposes bias in the media and lies pushed by politicians and the left." During his show on Saturday, Bongino — a former NYPD police officer and former member of the Secret Service — aired a segment focusing on his analysis of Democrat influence on how cities are governed. "Inner cities run exclusively and monopolistically by garbage Democrat politicians," Bongino said during his show, "who don't give a damn about people. They're the ones who ran these economies in these inner cities into the ground" (via The Daily Beast). While mayoral offices are actually positions that need to be voted on, and not bought, it's hard to understand the argument that Democrats are "monopolizing." Regardless, Bongino believes Democrat mayors are also the reason so many major cities are ranked as the "unhealthiest" places to live.
The only problem is, the graphic he was using as his source was showing the healthiest cities in the U.S. to live, not the unhealthiest. In a split-screen, viewers saw Bongino speaking on one side and a map with major cities pointed out in it. Underneath, the chyron read: "Dems create problems while promising to fix them."
Fox News has Twitter in a frenzy again over this blunder
In the Fox News show "Unfiltered," host Dan Bongino focused on what he felt the problem with "inner-city" mayors was. "You stand a pretty darn good chance of dying in one of these inner cities," he said in his show Saturday, "far more likely than in areas where they gave a damn about people and their healthcare outcomes." A map of the US with the caption of "Unhealthiest US cities" above it (per The Daily Beast).
The map, pulled from a report published in February 2021, listed Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Honolulu, San Diego, Denver, Irving, and Austin. But one Twitter user was quick to point out that what the Fox News host was really using to back up his claims was a list of what WalletHub found to be the healthiest cities. "I went to the source cited in this graphic and I'm not sure what happened here," the tweet read above a still of the news segment next to a screenshot from WalletHub's website.
Other Twitter users jumped on, including a data scientist who criticized not just the misinformation put into Bongino's news segment, but the source Fox News had approved as credible in the first place. He warned that "nobody should use this [chart and data] as anything besides an example of deceptive data practices." Another user said, "even for Fox News this seems ridiculous."