Fox Report Literally Reverses the Facts

James Peron
The Radical Center
Published in
3 min readFeb 6, 2022

Fox News has the reputation of a collection of whiny adolescents who don’t know what they are doing. It’s often hard telling whether they are showing their lack of skill or their dishonesty. Take a February 5 report Dan Bongino showed on Fox alleging to reveal the 10 unhealthiest cities in America. And he blamed it all on Democrats. Read the whole piece here and not just the Fox claims, otherwise you’ll miss the facts entirely.

Bongino said, “Let’s look at some major policy areas, right? The economy, healthcare, education, public safety. Where are economies struggling right now? Inner cities run exclusively and monopolistically by garbage Democrat politicians who don’t give a damn about people.”

“You look at some of the health outcomes in these inner cities the Democrats have run monopolistically for decades, and you stand a pretty darn good chance of dying in one of these inner cities — far more likely, than if you lived in an areas where they gave a damn about people and their healthcare outcomes.”

Now look at the map Fox produced (above) and note the 10 “unhealthiest” cities: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Honolulu, San Diego, Denver, Irving TX, Austin and Portland, Maine. Also note that they have a logo in the bottom right saying this information comes from Wallethub.

Now, for all the dishonesty in this report. First, Wallethub didn’t mention Irving, TX, they wrote about Irvine, CA. Wrong state, wrong name for the city! But as pathetic as that is, it isn’t the worst aspect of their ineptness or dishonesty.

A look at the Wallethub article shows it is titled “Healthiest & Unhealthiest Cities in America.” Second, Fox inverted the facts entirely. The 10 “liberal” cities they attack are actually listed as the 10 “Healthiest Places to Live in the U.S.” That’s the complete opposite of what Fox claimed. The healthiest city in America is San Francisco, followed by Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Honolulu, Washington DC, Austin, Irvine, Portland and Denver. (see actual Wallethub list of the top ten below.)

Screen capture of what Wallethub actually said!

Wallethub rated 182 American cities in total from healthiest to unhealthiest. The bottom ten, or least healthiest, were not “liberal” cities as Fox claimed, they were conservative and mostly Republican hotbeds. Here are the actual 10 cities at the bottom of the Wallethub list ending with the least healthiest:

10. Lubbock, TX
9. Huntington, WV
8. Jackson, MS
7. Fort Smith, AR
6. Montgomery, AL
5. Memphis, TN
4. Shreveport, LA
3. Gulfport, MS
2. Laredo, TX
1. Brownsville, TX

What is hilarious is the same Fox show falsifying the Wallethub article starts out with a tirade about how disinformation is a problem on the Left. In my experience disinformation is a problem of ideologues in general, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.

UPDATE: Fox has responded so far dishonestly. They reran the story on the network but deleted the graphic attached, but all the false statements by Bongino remained. They just removed the citation to the alleged “source” for his lies. They said: “On Saturday night’s episode of Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, a graphic was aired with inaccurate information on the unhealthiest cities in the country. We regret the error which will be corrected on next week’s program.”

This statement seems to blame the graphic for being inaccurate and not Bogino whose lies they have left untouched. How they correct it is yet to be seen.

For an update on another incident of Fox dishonesty see Tucker Carlson Blames White House for His Own Putin Pandering

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James Peron
The Radical Center

James Peron is the president of the Moorfield Storey Institute, was the founding editor of Esteem a LGBT publication in South Africa under apartheid.