A couple hours ago we pointed out how absurd the article Arthur Brisbane recently posted on the New York Times’ website was. Brisbane has now responded to all of his critics. He told Jim Romenesko:

What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the body of the stories they are writing. I was hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a difficult question… I was also hoping to stimulate a discussion about the difficulty of selecting which ‘facts’ to rebut, facts being troublesome things that seem to shift depending on the beholder’s perspective.

Hmm… Okay. We think we can (again) answer Brisbane fairly quickly.

Nuanced answer: Yes. Facts are facts. They are not difficult things. For example, the capital of North Dakota is Bismarck. That is a fact. It doesn’t “shift” because the FishbowlNY editors have never been to Bismarck.

Hope that clears things up.