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Fox host incorrectly claims that 20% of Americans know someone who died in 9/11 attacks

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

A Fox personality inaccurately claimed that “20% of Americans know someone that (sic) was lost” during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

  • The claim appears to come from a 2001 Slate article citing a Pew Research Center poll that stated that 20% of Americans “know or have a friend or relative who knows someone injured or killed in 9/11.”
  • While the 20% figure does indeed match the figure “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt said on air, saying that you “know someone that was lost” is much different than what the Pew poll says.
  • Essentially the Pew poll is going out several “degrees of separation” — so that 20% figure includes people who have “friends of friends” killed in the attacks.
  • It’s also worth noting the poll includes those “injured or killed” and not just those killed as Earhardt’s reference to “lost” seems to imply.
  • Doing some simple math, as a Twitter user going by the name Scott Plante did, based on an estimated U.S. population of 285 million 2001 means that roughly 57 million people living in the U.S. would have to have had to “known” at least one of the 3,000 people killed in the attacks.
  • Plante originally tweeted calculations using a slightly higher population figure, apparently from 2011, but corrected his tweet and calculations soon after.
  • Put another way, that means each of those 3,000 people would need to have “known” 20,000 people — which is a daunting number even in the world of “Facebook friends.”
  • For what it’s worth, that figure becomes even more improbable when you consider Facebook wouldn’t be founded until 2004.

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