Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies and statistics and his adage applies to unemployment measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six unemployment metrics monthly, each referred to in ascending order of inclusiveness of the unemployed as U-1, U-2, etc.

The measure reported by the media as the unemployment rate that severely undercounts the unemployed is referred to as U-3. The U-3 rate is obtained by dividing the narrowest definition of the unemployed by the work force.
The U-3 definition does not include whom the BLS calls discouraged and marginal workers, those who want a job but have given up the search because market conditions and personal experience indicate the process is futile.

U-6 Unemployment counts the marginal and discouraged plus those seeking full time employment but can only find part time work. The Federal Reserve tracks what it defines as the Augmented Unemployment rate, which I’ve read is equivalent to U-6 less part time workers. I couldn’t find any Augmented Unemployment releases on the Fed site and despite major data inclusion differences, some bloggers have used U-6 and the Fed’s stat interchangeably.

Karol over at Alarming News (as an aside, can anyone explain to me how any Soviet emigré can vote republican? What, you're not happy unless your government maintains gulags and tortures people?) approvingly quotes this oblivious drool from Roger Ailes, the chief propagandist of Fox "News":

“We haven’t had to fire our executives or our reporters or our anchors or anybody else for making up the news,” Ailes continued. “Maybe we’re a little too in-your-face at times. But basically what we do is cover the story, and we haven’t been forced to eat our words because we’re actually telling people what’s going on. Sometimes there’s more than one point of view, and we try to reflect that.”

Ailes must have an Olympic pool filled with spiked Kool-Aid, or perhaps a truly remarkable control over his facial tics, to be able to publicly utter this kind of delusional drivel. Here, take a look at the Wikipedia entry titled "Fox News channel controversies".

Photocopied memos from Fox News executive John Moody instructed the network's on-air anchors and reporters to use positive language when discussing pro-life viewpoints, the Iraq war, and tax cuts, as well as requesting that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal be put in context with the other violence in the area [3]. Such memos were reproduced for the anti-FOX News film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, which included Moody quotes such as, "[T]he soldiers [seen on FOX in Iraq ] in the foreground should be identified as 'sharpshooters,' not 'snipers,' which carries a negative connotation." Former Fox News producer Charlie Reina explained, "The roots of Fox News Channel's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the Bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it."