by Robert Rector

About the author: Robert Rector is a policy analyst for family and social welfare issues at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research institute in Washington, D.C.

“A startling number of American children are in danger of starving . . . one out of eight American children is going hungry tonight.” So began a CBS Evening News broadcast in March 1991. This headline-grabbing charge came from a survey conducted by the Food Research Action Center (FRAC), a liberal food advocacy group, sponsored by the Kraft Corporation, one of America’s largest food-processing companies.

CBS got it wrong. FRAC actually reported that one out of eight children in the United States had been “hungry” at some time during the prior year, not each night as the...