Fake Economic Charts Going Viral on Right-Wing Blogs
http://thecentristword.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/fake-economic-charts-going-viral-on-right-wing-blogs/When you think you have seen everything, that is when you find yourself shaking your head in disbelief. Since the general election campaign has kicked off, I have been following politics really closely to see what dirty tricks emerge. Well, I have found one – and in the age of social media, its a big one.
Yesterday I noticed a chart on a right-wing site that had an article that had been posted to Digg. In the post there was a chart. The chart was supposed to show deficit information about the last 6 presidents. I though to myself ‘wow that doesn’t look good for Obama’ but then I noticed something rather odd. The numbers did not match the chart. When I plugged the same numbers into excel, the chart looked completely different.
Was this just a one-off, or were there more to be found. It took me all of 15 minutes to find another one. However, this one used a different technique. This chart claimed to use data from the CBO. When I looked the information up on the CBO web site, the data for Obama was off by 25% for 2009 and 45% for 2010.
Over the next couple of hours I found the same inaccurate charts all over the web. While some claimed to be based on data from governmental agencies (CBO, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and others). Other charts were creative interpretations of data created by right wing think tanks and PACs.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Great information - however I am kind of biased since I wrote it 
Really disturbing trend when the strategy is an all out lying campaign - boggles the mind actually.
Hopefully we can get the word out so too many people don't get duped.
Not to be too cheesy but there are two other posts that you may like:
War on Women - http://thecentristword.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/a-quick-guide-to-the-gops-war-on-women/ (lot of sources)
and
Welfare Issue - http://thecentristword.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/the-euro-zone-has-greece-the-united-states-has-red-states/ (Title a bit shrill, but the purpose was to turn this hideous welfare argument on its ear. Did some research and what do you know - the politicians from the states that cry the loudest about welfare and try to demonize it are also the ones that receive the most).
Well, enough self promotion - again many thanks!
