Fox News Host Responds to Misleading Reports about ‘Least Trusted’ Graphic

Jessica Napoli April 9, 2018, 11:45 am

On a Sunday night news segment called “Media Buzz,” Fox News accidentally posted a graphic with a poll at the wrong time on the show that revealed it lagged behind other competing networks in terms of news trustworthiness.

Host Howard Kurtz was talking about a different poll done by Monmouth University related to how often media outlets post “fake news” when the graphic was used out of sequence.

.@FrankLuntz: “It’s [@POTUS‘s] own tweets that are causing so much of the trouble… He should be focused on the economy and on taxes.” #MediaBuzz pic.twitter.com/hbjdU6G7gz

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 8, 2018

The poll on-screen showed the results of a different question, this one about trust in different news outlets. The chart showed that CNN came in at 48 percent trustworthy, while MSNBC was in second at 45 percent. Fox News came in third with 30 percent.

Kurtz quickly realized the mistake, and told producers to “take that down, please.” The poll was used at another point in time on the show.

Kurtz responded on incident on Facebook:

And Twitter:

Trolls: I *asked* for the graphic on trust in Trump v Fox and other nets. It came up while I was citing other numbers and then we showed it again #SorryToSpoilYourFun

— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) April 9, 2018

For the record, Monmouth found 30% trust Fox more (other nets were higher), 20 % trust Trump more and 37% trust both equally (other nets were lower) #Mediabuzz

— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) April 9, 2018

Amazing how many paratisans blindly retweet a false item about a poll graphic that I ordered & chose to air (after it was posted our of sequence) regardless of what it said about Fox or Trump

— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) April 9, 2018