O'Reilly claimed his producer's specious op-ed piece "destroyed" IU study

On the May 10 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly claimed Factor producer Ron Mitchell "has blown the lid off" an Indiana University (IU) study that found O'Reilly engages in name-calling in his "Talking Points Memo" segments once every 6.8 seconds. Referring to an op-ed Mitchell wrote that appeared on the Los Angeles Times website, O'Reilly told viewers that Mitchell "just destroyed" the study, and criticized the Times for posting Mitchell's op-ed online and not publishing it in its print edition. But as Media Matters for America documented, Mitchell's op-ed contains a significant falsehood.

Mitchell claimed: "[T]he researchers admit they had to make several changes to their 'coding instrument' because the first attempts generated 'unacceptably low scores.' That's code for: they tried and tried until the results fit the preconceived notion of name-calling on the Factor."

In fact, in his eagerness to impute malicious motives to the IU researchers, Mitchell displayed a misunderstanding of the techniques of content analysis. In their methodological note, the researchers described the process they went through refining their coding instrument to achieve "intercoder reliability." The process the IU researchers used is standard practice: An instrument is designed and tested, and if the measures are found to yield unacceptably low levels of reliability between coders, the instrument is refined and/or the coders receive more training to remove ambiguity until an acceptable level of reliability is achieved. The researchers did not "try and try" to fit any "preconceived notion." They refined the coding instrument in conformity with standard practice.

From the May 10 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Time now for the "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day." I was all set to compliment the Los Angeles Times, and they hosed us in the end.

Last week, their far-left columnist Rosa Brooks -- who works for George Soros, if you can believe it, but the Times doesn't tell its readers that -- harpooned me about this bogus Indiana University study that says I insult people once every 6.8 seconds. Well, Factor producer Ron Mitchell has blown the lid off that study, and you can see it on BillOReilly.com. I mean, we've just destroyed it.

So, we called the L.A. Times and said this is a bogus study, you gotta print Mitchell's article. They said they would, and they put it on their Internet site. Not good, you guys. You guys really gotta be more honest. The Los Angeles Times strikes again.

—A.I.