The mainstream media have been complaining about fake news on social media. Fox News had no shame as they delivered some more even as all media is under scrutiny.
Fox News delivers more fake news
Fox News continued their lying to their audience as they broadcast a segment titled “Food Stamp Fraud at All-Time High: Is It Time to End the Program?”
Mother Jones had the best reporting on this lie.
Now, the obvious response to this is twofold. First, they’re just lying, aren’t they? And second, this is like a headline that says, “Traffic Deaths at All-Time High: Should We Ban Cars?” But at this point the story takes a strange turn. First, I have no idea where Fox’s $70 million figure comes from—and I looked pretty hard for it. The Fox graphic attributes it to “2016 USDA,” but as near as I can tell the USDA has no numbers for SNAP fraud more recent than 2011.1
But that’s not all: $70 million is a startlingly low figure. In the most recent fiscal year, SNAP cost $71 billion, which means that fraud accounted for a minuscule 0.098 percent of the program budget. Even if this is an all-time high, the Fox high command can’t believe this is anything but a spectacular bureaucratic success. And it would be, if it were true. But it’s not.
So much for mainstream media credibility.