Apparently, any amount of intellectual dishonesty can be excused if it serves the progressive agenda. Being a left-wing institution certainly comes with privileges. Because such organizations’ research often serves the mainstream media’s preferred narratives, their new studies and reports can become news events in ways that comparable right-wing research wouldn’t. And for the same reason, media outlets often don’t bother to check their work before making it news.

So it is that in the past few days, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, Yahoo, and others have run breathless articles highlighting a new Oxfam report on inequality that claims that “since the start of the pandemic . . . billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $5 trillion.” Unsurprisingly, these “news” articles read like fawning press releases and did not cite a single critic of the Oxfam report or of the general argument that the existence of billionaires is harmful.

Yet five minutes of research would expose the $5 trillion figure as flatly false. Oxfam’s report measured billionaire wealth in large part by rising stock values. But instead of measuring the change in stock values from the beginning of the pandemic, they simply ignored the initial 28 percent stock-market decline and measured from the bottom of the trough to the present.

The S&P 500 was at 3,380 on February 20, 2020. The following Monday, pandemic fears hit the stock market, causing a tumble in stock prices. The S&P continued falling until it hit 2,436 at the close of March 17, and then began rebounding to its current level of 4,660. Naturally, Oxfam chose to begin its measurements on March 18, when the S&P 500 was at the nadir of its monthlong free fall.

It is, of course, true that the S&P 500 and companies owned by billionaires have seen stock values rise since the pandemic began (and anyone with a 401(k) should understand that the wealthy aren’t the only ones who benefit from a strong stock market). But Oxfam’s carefully chosen start date turned a 1,280-point increase in the S&P 500 into a 2,224-point increase, exaggerating the rise by a full 74 percent.

Any moderately competent fact-checker would notice that Oxfam ignored the initial pandemic-related stock-market collapse and counted only the rebound. But much of the media either did not bother to do any investigating whatsoever, or, perhaps in some cases, preferred to stick with Oxfam’s narrative anyway because it was in line with their own prejudices.

Nor is this an isolated event. In June 2020, the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) used the same March starting date as the basis for its claim that the pandemic was already increasing billionaire wealth. The claim managed to make headlines in ABC News, CNBC, Fox Business, Business Insider, CNN, Reuters, and Newsweek and was shared tens of thousands of times on social media. In response, I began to write an article debunking IPS’s narrative for Capital Matters and contacted several of these organizations to explain that the data were misleading. It didn’t matter. Every few months, IPS would update their data to the present day and receive another round of breathless media coverage. Only USA Today ran a “fact check” — and it inexplicably rated IPS’s claim as true!

Now, Oxfam has simply copied IPS and earned its own round of unthinking media plaudits.

It should be noted that Oxfam’s hysterical report, “Inequality Kills,” is hampered by more than just misleading data; it’s a political screed from top to bottom. It claims that challenges in developing countries such as poverty, dirty water, and even spousal abuse are the direct consequence of the United States’ creating too many billionaires. Ludicrously, it asserts that “inequality is now contributing to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds.” How far do they have to reach to blame billionaires for these longstanding global challenges? Quite some distance. The death count attributed to inequality includes “At a minimum, 67,000 women [dying] each year due to female genital mutilation, or murder at the hands of a former or current partner—gender-based violence rooted in patriarchy and sexist economic systems” (emphasis added). If only Apple’s stock price hadn’t soared, the authors seem to suggest, those women would still be alive.

And what does Oxfam propose as a response to the “economic violence” of the billionaire class? “A 99% one-off windfall tax on the COVID-19 wealth gains of the 10 richest men alone.” This is the stuff of banana-republic kleptocracies.

Dubious data, hysterical screeds, and calls for confiscating 99 percent of the new wealth of the scapegoated few? The mainstream media will apparently excuse any amount of intellectual dishonesty if it serves their political agenda.

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. @Brian_Riedl