The Maine Wire chief editor’s description of a U.S. Senate candidate’s alleged oyster business as a fake campaign prop turns out to be true, despite an alleged media critic claiming he’s wrong.

Steve Robinson came under fire from a group that calls itself Politifact for saying on national TV that Graham Platner’s oystering is a ruse designed to prop up his status with voters as a working stiff.

Politifact tried to prove Robinson wrong with what turned out to be a lengthy, vacuous “investigation” allegedly looking into the Democrat candidate’s claims of being a workingman’s oyster farmer.

But, try as it might, Politifact came up embarrassingly empty.

Ben Brasch insisted in a piece he published Tuesday that Robinson is wrong – that Graham Platner is a bonafide oyster dealer.

The problem is, Brasch failed to confirm that Platner is making any real money selling oysters – other than maybe to his mother’s restaurant.

Brasch actually admitted as much in his article, writing:

“Platner’s income from the oyster business is unclear. Under the ‘compensation’ section of his personal financial disclosure, the one entry listed as providing him more than $5,000 annually is from his mother’s business, Ironbound Restaurant and Inn. The description is simply ‘oyster purveyor to restaurant.’”

“Platner’s income from the oyster business is unclear.”

So there it is in black and white – Brasch admitting that the finances of Platner’s business are suspect – the very essence of Robinson’s skepticism.

Platner’s own financial disclosures show that he reported between $5,000 to $10,000 in income for an entire year – at least $5,000 of which came from his mom’s restaurant, Robinson pointed out.

“Politifact claims Platner’s oyster hobby is a full-time job and a business that’s not phony,” Robinson said Tuesday night. “Maybe Politifact pays their fact-checkers $5k and calls it a full-time job. But here in Maine, when mommy pays you to play in your boat, that’s a hobby.”

Though Politifact claims to be nonpartisan, Wiki says two analyses showed it’s more likely to find fault with Republican claims than Democrat.

Independent media monitors generally rate PolitiFact as having a lean-left, or liberal bias, according to AllSides.com.

“PolitiFact leans center-left,” says Bryan White, creator of Zebra Fact Check. “That means it’s fairly consistently tougher on conservatives and Republicans than on liberals and Democrats.”

If Brasch’s critique of Robinson was supposed to be nonpartisan then his pointing out that The Maine Wire “was founded in 2011 by the conservative think tank Maine Policy Institute” is suspect on its face.

Brasch’s supposed analysis of Robinson’s claim that Platner is a fake oyster farmer should be based on whether it is true or false, not on the editor’s political leanings.

“PolitiFact has not earned a reputation for consistent accuracy,” White says. “Indeed, it is hard to see how any fact checker that insists on making a subjective rating system the focus of its website could ever legitimately earn readers’ trust.”

Meanwhile, Brasch falsely claimed that Robinson refused to comment when he reached out to him.

In fact, when Brasch emailed Robinson online with questions, Robinson responded with a lengthy, detailed analysis of his claims.