Lil White Lies: Bluffin' with Those Muffins

I haven’t even been looking at "Deff Jeff" Dyberg’s posts at Bewz Newz N Vewz for a while: for one thing, he doesn’t do much, for another, his words are rendered a bit too fetid and rank by his Ayn Rand libertarian bias. Lately, and I believe at the behest of mentor/co-dependent Bryan White, he has made some anemic attempts at PolitiFact (PF) ruling reviews to add to Bryan’s fruitless list of “anecdotal evidence of PolitiFact’s (liberal) bias.” I wanted to respond to one in particular just because the Lady GaGa/SNL Betty White sexual innuendo made for a great title; it was a critique of a PolitiFact ruling on Bill O’Reilly, who was highly critical of what he claimed was the government spending $16 a “muffin” for morning refreshments at “conferences for pinheads”. That was “his $16” he proclaimed loudly in his Talking Point segment on his Fox News show (or to Jon Stewart a week later, I’m not sure). I still didn’t feel looking at Jeff’s critique was worth it until Politifact reported that Stephen Colbert had satirized “MuffinGate” with Bill Adair featured in a video snippet explaining why the $16 wasn’t all for muffins—it was for other accompaniments such as coffee, tea, and also covered the cost of the conference room.

According to Dyberg, however, there was a single ulterior motive for PF selecting this particular Bill O’Reilly statement for fact-checking.

The answer is simple: Ratings.

PolitiFact isn't the benevolent truth seekers they portray themselves as. The facts are Bill O'Reilly made the statement on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If you've ever gone to PolitiFact's Facebook page you know that the number of commenters goes through the roof if they even mention Stewart's name. I also happen to know that my other blog experiences abnormally high traffic and search hits whenever Stewart and PolitiFact get in a tussle. The opportunity to make O'Reilly look bad while making an appearance on Stewart's show was a can't miss opportunity to gin up publicity from Stewart's followers.

First off, if you watch the video of it below, O’Reilly tells Stewart he “broke the story” on his Fox News show the week before. So this was the second time he said it.

Secondly, just before this quote Dyberg states that the source of O’Reilly’s story was ABC News, and that maybe ABC News (not O’Reilly) should have been subjected to the Truth-o-Meter since they made the false statement--or, the Department of Justice Inspector General who did the audit which reported this muffin expense "outrage.”

But PolitiFact looks at people in politics: not news reporting organizations, not governmental departments. You don’t see ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox News being rated by the Truth-o-Meter. Neither do you see the Departments of Education, Energy, or in this case, the Department of Justice. If Dyberg thinks Adair should be rating them, he should provide examples of Truth-o-Meter rulings done on them. But there are none, because that is not what the “Politi” in “PolitiFact” means. He mistakenly assumes that PF should unilaterally subject everyone to the Truth-o-Meter.

Bill O’Reilly has had ten statements judged by PF overall; his Truth Index is at -35, which is about average for Republicans and the conservative Media. You’d think it would be much lower if Dyberg was correct and PF’s aim was to “make O’Reilly look bad.” He also received a Mostly False rating for his Muffin-Gate pronouncements, not False, not Pants on Fire. A Mostly False barely budges his overall average, and PF would be more inclined, if it really wanted to make O’Reilly look bad, to go for a “Pants on Fire” ruling instead of just a somewhat ineffectual “Mostly False.” Additionally, recall why Mostly False was changed from Barely True? Because certain Republicans left out the Barely and declared it really meant PF gave a “True” ruling.

But to get back to Dyberg’s erroneous analysis: there were far better reasons for PolitiFact to select such a statement for theTruth-o-Meter as uttered by Bill O’Reilly. It was explained in a Huffington Post piece entitled “Muffingate's Sad Story: 178 Articles Perpetuate DOJ Myth, 37 Correct” this way:

And yet, the results do show how reluctant the media and politicians are to acknowledge that sometimes a [$16 muffin] myth is just a myth. O'Reilly, for one, kept perpetuating the [$16 muffin] story (while taking credit for breaking it) during a Sept. 28 appearance on "The Daily Show."



This photo of male "muffin-tops" reminded me of
Bewz Newz N Vewz, I don't know why!

 That far better reason for PolitiFact was to put a damper on the “178 Articles” perpetuating the myth, as well as count itself as one of the “37 Correct.” This is just the kind of pervasive media-driven falsehood that is ideal for the PolitiFact machine to take on. Perhaps secondarily to gin up publicity...you never know. But Bill O’Reilly was already making himself look bad by continuing the lie (and taking credit for breaking it)—PF didn’t have to help him. I’m willing to bet O’Reilly already knew the story had been corrected but didn’t care to admit that he was wrong and continued spreading the falsehood.

Dyberg had one comment added to his post: Bryan White sycophants “Excellent work, Jeff.” Yikes! If he thinks Jeff’s work is excellent, I’m absolutely thrilled he thinks mine is so bad. And since it was soooo excellent (cough cough choke choke) it definitely deserves to be included  in my Lil White Lies series.