Deutsch, Goldberg, O’Reilly: StatementGate

When Bill O’Reilly tackled the Donny Deutsch/Bernard Goldberg spat on the Factor last week, he told his audience: “We asked NBC for a statement. They declined to provide one.”

But Deutsch did provide a statement, according to Lloyd Grove. “They asked for a statement. They received a statement,” the CNBC host says. “O’Reilly had the statement right in front of him…Mr. Zero Spin is the ultimate spinner.”

But O’Reilly’s executive producer Dave Tabacoff says it wasn’t the right statement: “We wanted to know what NBC’s policy is when you have four journalists and a host who didn’t even read the book, ganging up on another journalist. And we didn’t get an answer.”

If NBC issued a statement, but it didn’t answer the question you asked, does that mean they “declined to provide one?”