Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Graph Garbage

As CNN continues to fade into obscurity, a graph posted yesterday looked like another attempt to appease the Right in CNN's attempt to dash to their side of the political spectrum. Media Matters has the skinny:
According to the poll, conducted March 18-20, when asked if they "agree[d] with the court's decision to have the feeding tube removed," 62 percent of Democratic respondents agreed, compared to 54 percent of Republicans, and 54 percent of Independents. But these results were displayed along a very narrow scale of 10 percentage points, and thus appeared to show a large gap between Democrats and Republicans/Independents:
So instead of starting the baseline at zero,, they choose to go with a 53 - 63 spread, leading one to believe on a cursory visual peek, that there is this large gap amongst respondents.


Fortunately, they recognized the error in their ways, and corrected the graphic once they were called on it.

Makes you wonder how they thought they were going to get away with it. Do they think we aren't paying attention. Judging by their recent ratings book, maybe nobody is!

(via Atrios)
Flash

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