“Fuzzy Math”: Fox's Latest Attempt To Obscure The Current Unemployment Figures

Ever since the Department of Labor released the November unemployment numbers, which showed that the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.6 percent from 9 percent, Fox News has had trouble accurately presenting the data.

On December 2, the day of the announcement, Fox News' morning show Fox & Friends created a graphic that rounded up the unemployment rate to 9 percent.

Earlier today, Fox's “straight news” division aired a misleading chart purporting to show the unemployment rate during 2011. The chart made it seem as if unemployment had not dropped at all even though it had dropped by 0.4 percentage points.

Then Fox tried again. Maybe the third time is the charm. On tonight's edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said that the 8.6 percent unemployment rate reported by the Department of Labor actually constituted “Washington, Obama fuzzy math” because it does not account for people who have stopped looking for work. (One small victory for honesty: At least this time, Hannity didn't lie about the unemployment rate when Bush left office.)

One could argue about the best way to measure unemployment, but when George W. Bush was president, Hannity touted the same Department of Labor statistics to claim that the economy under Bush was going gangbusters.

There is fuzzy math here. But it's not coming from Obama. It's coming from Fox News.