Just how negative was CNN prepared to go to get Bill O’Reilly fired from Fox News and make it a little easier for Anderson Cooper to score some ratings? The Hollywood Reporter revealed CNN was “extremely close” to going to court to pry into O’Reilly’s divorce records:
At CNN this week, an internal debate arose over whether to get truly aggressive in its effort to investigate Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, currently on vacation amid a probe into sexual harassment claims made by several women.
Multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that CNN, a heated rival to Fox News, was extremely close to filing a motion to unseal the anchor's matrimonial records — potentially exposing O'Reilly's very private information and adding a new dimension to the firestorm. CNN, however, is now said to be leaning against doing so, even after some executives expressed enthusiasm for the effort. Contacting Fox News advertisers to see whether they'd be sticking with the embattled O'Reilly is fair game, but in the cable TV war, wading into O'Reilly's sticky divorce might be a bridge that CNN has had second thoughts about crossing….
O'Reilly, 67, and his ex [Maureen McPhilmy] entered into a separation agreement in 2010 before a custody battle proceeded. Some elements of the case, officially captioned as Anonymous v. Anonymous, are salacious and could support the claims that O'Reilly mistreats women. For example, Gawker reported in 2015 that trial transcripts showed his teenage daughter telling a forensic examiner that she witnessed O’Reilly “choking her mom" as he “dragged her down some stairs” by the neck, and that he struggles to control his rage.
It's also worth considering that if a liberal were the center of attention here, claims about personal behavior in a hostile divorce case might not pass the standards of evidence that "fake news" scolds would demand.
This decision may have less to do with conscience and more to do with the level of difficulty: “If it did, the Time Warner-owned news outlet would have an uphill road ahead, as an appellate court in February affirmed a judge's decision to keep O'Reilly divorce records secret. In January, moreover, one media lawyer was kicked out of the courtroom for an attempt to pry information loose.”
We can all guess how the liberal media elite would evaluate the situation if Fox News ever tried to dig around into Anderson Cooper’s private life. But somehow, O’Reilly is fair game.
This is a fascinating piece of CNN history, given how much they hated anyone daring to muck around in Bill Clinton’s private life, even when he was using the White House as a haven for sexual harassment. On January 28, 1998, two days after Clinton lied and said “I did not have a sexual relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” CNN aired a special titled Investigating the President: Media Madness? Jeff Greenfield began:
More than 200 years after the Founding Fathers risked their lives to found a nation built on the idea of freedom, after crafting the Bill of Rights, whose very first guarantee is the right of a free press to inform and educate the people, millions of those people are asking the press one question fraught with significance: What the hell are you people doing trying to find out what kind of sex the President of the United States might or might not be having?
And was the sex consensual, or were women pressured into sex in the workplace? CNN didn't care. Then-CNN media reporter Howard Kurtz was the anti-Brian Stelter, demanding privacy for this public figure: “There is something about this story, this presidency, that has led the media to almost obliterate the standards of decency that were built up for so many years.”
The enthusiasts for playing dirty inside CNN might have found inspiration in the Chicago Tribune, which helped pave Barack Obama’s ascension to the Senate in 2004 by suing for (and then spilling) the divorce records of his challengers – Blair Hull in the Democratic primaries, and Republican Jack Ryan in the general. Obama then had a cakewalk election against carpet-bagging Republican Alan Keyes.
