Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is one of my favorite corporate media reporters in the Twin Cities. He’s usually quite careful and articulate and generally has a point of view (as opposed to the view from nowhere). That’s why I was genuinely curious about his use of “fib” multiple times, in multiple forms in his “What did they know and when did they know it” piece this morning. After all, the head for the package of unrelated stories is “Credibility is early casualty in Koch probe.”
Collins’s usage of “fib” was in relation to Minnesota State Senator Geoff Michel‘s (R-District 41) comments to the press regarding the resignation of Minnesota State Senate Leader Amy Koch (R-District 19) over an “improper relationship” with a colleague.
Upon being asked when the four Minnesota State Senate leaders knew about Koch’s improper relationship, Michel told reporters—on the record—“the allegations about Koch’s behavior were first reported to them a few weeks ago.” That was not true, and Michel knew it. Tom Scheck and Catharine Richert, reporting for MPR, note Koch’s former chief-of-staff, Cullen Sheehan, revealed details of the improper relationship to the Minnesota State Senate leadership three months ago. “Three months ago, I became aware of a potential relationship between Sen. Koch and a staff person,” Sheehan told Scheck and Richert. “I then spoke to the staff person and he confirmed the relationship. We both then met with Sen. Koch and she confirmed the relationship. The next day I met with Sen. Koch to discuss the situation. I subsequently met with the Deputy Majority Leader” [Senator Geoff Michel]. Sheehan left employment at the Minnesota Senate in November, refused to identify the staff member, and refused to tell Scheck and Richert why he left the Minnesota Senate.
I was really curious why Collins chose to use “fib” to describe Michel’s outright lie to reporters asking what the leadership knew when. So I asked him, both in a comment on his piece, and in a tweet. Collins responded similarly on both Twitter and in a comment to his original piece. He finds “fib” a more interesting word. Fair enough. Except in his initial comment on his MPR blog, partially in response to another commenter, Collins writes, “Because everyone expects the word ‘lie’ when writing about politics. It has the same impact now as ‘Nazi.’ I don’t like writing words that go in one ear and out the other.”
Whoah, conflating “lie” with “Nazi” seemed way over the top to me, so I became even more curious. I looked up the definition of “fib” and according to the Oxford American English Dictionary, the word means “a lie, typically an unimportant one.” I referenced the definition in Twitter and in another comment on Collins’s article, asking if he was saying that what Senator Michel said was unimportant. Collins dodged the question in a subsequent comment on his article and told me in a tweet that I was “free to use whatever definition you wish.”
Wait. What?
