How a hack at something called Sploid jump-started the newest Fox-hater lie. With J$P Video! Updated! An impolitic reply.

News travels fast on the internet. It moves even faster through the Fox haters' echo chamber. Here's the story of what kicked off their latest smear, and how easily the gullible were duped.

A site called "Sploid" fashions itself "a news site with a tabloid mentality". (Well yeah, if by tabloid you mean the Weekly World News.) It all started with them:

"Something happened," neo-conservative magazine editor William Kristol said on Fox News this afternoon. "It's going to be a bad few days. We're going to discover something ... It will be something not good for the Bush Administration." Fox News actually got a phone call from a "top White House official" during Kristol's damning comments, and Kristol was cut off so Bush mouthpiece Chris Wallace could say the Goss resignation is just a harmless part of the "White House shakeup." Sure.

Within hours this "report" surfaced on all kinds of blue blogs. Among those who swallowed it whole were The Moderate Voice, Lobal Warming, and Wonkette. Middle Earth Journal was so struck by the "report" that they asked:

What does Bill Kristol know?

The Impolitic takes it a step further:

I find that phone call rather telling.

The ironically named Hammer of Truth takes it to the next level:

Wow… you just know something salacious is up when they call Fox News and tell Kristol to STFU about something on air.

And naturally, at the newshounds, the number one name among the Fox haters, the slander snowballs:

• 'Sploid is reporting that Bill Kristol went bye-bye's after stating on Fox that Goss' resignation means "something bad" for the Bush administration.

But there's a problem: the Sploid "report" tinkers just a bit with reality. And just by coincidence, the effect is to smear Fox News [QuickTime video clip]:



So we hear that Mr Wallace "just got off the phone" with a "senior White House official" (note that Sploid couldn't even quote this four-word phrase accurately). Did Mr Wallace say at any time that someone at the White House initiated the call? That it was the source who called Wallace, rather than the other way around? No. Did Wallace even claim that the call was during Bill Kristol's comments? No again. So where did "Sploid" come up with all this? They made it up! When you can't smear FNC with the truth, just invent your own "facts". So much for the "rather telling" phone call.

As for this being a secret conspiracy between Fox and the White House to silence Bill Kristol, again the lies dry up when exposed to the sunlight of truth. Right after Chris Wallace reported on what his source told him, look who was back on the air [QuickTime video clip]:



What's more, an hour later, there he was again.

A few small fictions, magnified by the echo chamber, become a full-blown slander. And another lie is enshrined in the mythology of the Fox haters. All we need now is for someone to type it in to Wikipedia and the circle will be complete.


Update: One of the credulous blue bloggers who fell for the story appears to disagree with our report:

I feel like slapping myself for being so silly as to think a call from, or immediately accepted by, a senior official from the White House was telling

Well that's a little progress: a call from, or immediately accepted by, the White House. Already backing away from the claim that the call came from the White House. We're not sure, however, where the notion that it was "immediately" accepted comes from. How do they know how long it took? Did Impolitic have a tap on the line, or did they just make that up? Continuing:

I mean, I should have remembered that Chris Wallace is in the habit of chatting up the White House during a live broadcast

Um, Chris Wallace was not on the air when the phone call took place. He came on the air afterward to report what he was told. That much was obvious to anyone who was watching. Isn't that how reporters report? They work the phones, talk to sources, and then report.

... Kristol's subdued tone, after the phone call, meant he felt just a little initimdated. Give us a break Dollar and show us the money clips. As the very brief video clip so helpfully provided showed, Kristol looked a bit shaken after the call. But we were discussing what happened prior, so where's the footage of Kristol before the call and of Chris Matthews breaking in?

If we had footage of Chris Matthews breaking in on Fox News Channel we wouldn't hesitate to run it. It would probably cause him some problems at MSNBC however. As for Kristol's comments before Wallace's update, we weren't aware there was any controversy about them. They have been widely reported, and we never claimed they were anything other than what they were. Our clip does show the moment when they switched from Kristol to Wallace. Our second clip shows Kristol coming back after Wallace to resume commenting--something Sploid and all the folks who quoted him never even bothered to mention!

Kristol basically said the same thing after Wallace's report, and again in the next hour with Shepard Smith. In fact, the deep blue blog at Think Progress thought so much of that third appearance that they put the video up on their site. That alleged "call from the White House" certainly had an effect on those propagandists at FNC. Fox put Kristol on again, and again, to repeat what the haters claim Fox was trying to cover up!

Oh, and Impolitic's claim that Kristol's tone was subdued "after" the phone call? Is that of a piece with the assertion that Chris Wallace was taking phone calls while doing a live broadcast? We note that Impolitic's original posting on this matter merely quoted the flawed reportage of Sploid, and didn't say, suggest, or even hint that Ms Impolitic herself had even seen the broadcast in question. (If she had, why would she need Sploid to tell her what was said?) And now, Impolitic is comparing Kristol's demeanor before and after Wallace's report. Some might question how she could do that if she hadn't even seen the broadcast, but we just don't know. Unlike the haters, we do not make up "facts".