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DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Fri Dec 30, 2016, 04:37 PM Dec 2016

Fox News runs incorrect correction of food-stamp fraud report, then corrects correction

By Erik Wemple December 30 at 11:48 AM

-snip-

Here’s how Huntsman presented the correction at around 6:45 a.m. today:

An update to a story that we brought to you earlier this week regarding fraud in the food-stamp program: So we reported that in 2016, $70 million was wasted on food-stamp fraud. That was incorrect. The latest information, from 2009 to 2011, shows the fraud at 1.3 percent, which is approximately $853 million for those three years combined. Nationally food-stamp trafficking is on the decline.

With that presentation, Fox News came closer to reality, though there was still some work to do. As the USDA report makes clear, the food-stamp trafficking numbers are actually $858 million annually from 2009 to 2011, not combined, as Huntsman said. So once again, Fox News appeared determined to under-represent actual food-stamp trafficking, even in a segment clearly designed to hammer SNAP.

So Huntsman tried again an hour later:

An update to a story that we brought you earlier this week regarding fraud in the food-stamp program. We reported that back in 2016, $70 million were wasted on food-stamp fraud. That was actually incorrect. The latest information from 2009 to 2011 shows the fraud at 1.3 percent, which is approximately $853 million for each of those three years and nationally food-stamp trafficking is on the decline.

Better! Though still not 100 percent: Food-stamp trafficking is actually on the rise — to 1.3 percent in the 2009-2011 study, from 1.0 percent in the USDA’s 2006-2008 study. The trafficking rate, however, is indeed down from its levels in the 1990s.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/12/30/fox-news-runs-incorrect-correction-of-food-stamp-fraud-report-then-corrects-correction/?utm_term=.0a7183448bb0&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1