Fox News Total Lie About Food Stamp Fraud Sparks Rare Retr

Fox News' Abby Huntsman this week delivered an entirely false story about food stamp fraud to "Fox & Friends" viewers, sparking a rare request from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture for the right wing cable news giant to issue a retraction. As NCRM reported, Huntsman told viewers that food stamp fraud is at an all-time high and totaled about $70 million in 2016. That would be 0.09% of the total amount of food stamps issued annually, an incredibly low number, actually, but false nonetheless. Fox News also lied; claiming food stamp fraud was at the highest level ever. It's actually not, and it's actually decreasing.

Huntsman did not respond.

So, not one word of the report was true, including the fact that the USDA hasn't issued any numbers on the SNAP program for 2016, or 2015, or 2014, leading to our tweet to Huntsman:

In fact, as Mother Jones' Kevin Drum \u2013 who first reported that the Fox News report was a lie \u2013 notes, there are no published numbers on food stamp fraud past 2011.

RELATED STORY: Fox News Is Asking if the Food Stamp Program That Helps 44 Million Americans Should Be Ended Because of 0.09% Fraud

\u201cWe are not quite sure where this came from,\u201d a spokesperson for the USDA, speaking about the fraudulent statistics Fox News reported, told The Washington Post's Erik Wemple. \u201cWe saw that there was as story on Breitbart. We have not issued a report on this recently. There is no new rate that we\u2019ve published. So we\u2019re not quite sure why they\u2019re so interested in stirring this up.\u201d

Wemple reports that the Agriculture Dept. requested a retraction from Fox News, which is rare, and even morerare, Fox News pulled its original report and issued the retraction.

"The statistics reported Tuesday in a 'Fox & Friends' segment about 2016 food stamp fraud were incorrect," Fox News Insider, where the original report was published, noted. "The latest USDA information, from 2009 to 2011, showed $853 million in fraud, or 1.3% in those three years. Nationally, food stamp trafficking is on the decline."

Fox News' report also was based on the "question" that perhaps the food stamp program, SNAP, should be eliminated, because of fraud.

That suggestion is on its face insane. The amount of food stamp fraud is so minor compared to the number of people it serves (44 million) it barely is worth reporting, especially since it's decreasing, not increasing. Also, 45 percent of food stamps go to feed children, not adults.