Did Sanders Lie About Clinton's Oil Money? NPR Factchecker Can't Be Bothered to Check

"Put another way, the oil and gas money is two-tenths of 1 percent of Clinton's $159.9 million overall fundraising."

If there's an "implication that dirty energy has got her on a string," Overby observes, "campaign finance data suggest it wouldn't be much of a string."

But what about "lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry" -- isn't that what Sanders is supposed to be lying about, to the point of making Hillary Clinton sick? To give him credit, Overby is good enough to tell us what he isn't telling us:

"The industry total here doesn't include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, and it doesn't do what the Republican opposition research group America Rising did: include corporate money to the Clinton Foundation. The presidential campaign cannot raise corporate money."

Well -- why not include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, since that is what the Sanders campaign, like other critics, was explicitly talking about? According to Greenpeace, Clinton has gotten "$1,465,610 in bundled and direct donations from lobbyists currently registered as lobbying for the fossil fuel industry." That's quite a bit more string.

And corporations can't give directly to campaigns, but they can give to Super PACs that support campaigns. Greenpeace cites "$3,250,000 in donations from large donors connected to the fossil fuel industry to Priorities Action USA, a Super PAC supporting Secretary Clinton's campaign."

That works out to $5 million altogether. It's hard to say what the going rate for buying a presidential candidate is, but unlike Overby, I wouldn't refer to Clinton's fossil-fuel-industry contributions as "paltry."

And even though Overby warns you away from looking at the Clinton Foundation -- because it's the sort of thing a "Republican opposition research group" would do -- you don't need to go to a middleman; the Clinton Foundation lists its donors on its website. There you can learn that the Foundation has received at least $10 million from Saudi Arabia; at least $5 million from Kuwait, as well as from oil-refining billionaire Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi; at least $1 million from ExxonMobil, natural gas-producer Cheniere Energy, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Foundation, "Friends of Saudi Arabia," etc.

Those are the facts. NPR did its best to stop or slow them down.

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter:@JNaureckas.

You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR's contact form or viaTwitter: @ejensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.