The 'Oh Really?' Factor
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-oh-really-factor/
If it's "spin" to back up your arguments with bogus facts and statistics, and to dismiss numbers that don't fit in with your preconceptions, then Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Channel show isn't, as he repeatedly claims, a "no-spin zone"--it's Spin City.
During an interview with National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy (O'Reilly Factor, 2/5/02), O'Reilly claimed that "58 percent of single-mom homes are on welfare." When Gandy questioned that figure, O'Reilly held firm: "You can't say no, Miss Gandy. That's the stat. You can't just dismiss it.... It’s 58 percent. That's what it is from the federal government."
But by the next broadcast (2/6/02), O'Reilly was revising his accounting: "At this point, we have this from Washington, and it's bad. Fifty-two percent of families receiving public assistance are headed by a single mother, 52 percent." Not only is that a different number, it's the reverse of the statistic he offered the previous night-- not the percentage of households headed by single mothers that receive welfare, but the percentage of families receiving public assistance headed by single mothers. That's a distinction that O'Reilly did not attempt to clarify; he seemed unapologetic about emphatically putting forward an inaccurate statistic the night before....
There's a valuable lesson here for Factor watchers: When O'Reilly is most certain, you should be most skeptical. On another show (2/26/01), O'Reilly explained to Florida state senator Kendrick Meek that, thanks to Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" program, 37 percent of students at Florida universities were black: "Thirty-seven percent. That's much higher than the population, the black population, of Florida. Bush is doing a good job for you guys and you're vilifying him." When Meek challenged those numbers, O'Reilly insisted they were "dead on."
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