O'Reilly Factor

The New York Times published an article Monday about the anger some Vietnam veterans feel over the vessel they used to serve on, Swift Boat, now being synonymous with "the nastiest of campaign smears."

In dredging up this issue, Times' writer Kate Zernike not only misrepresented many of the facts surrounding the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but also completely ignored the mainstream media's role in turning the name of this patrol craft into a political pejorative.

In fact, something the Times conveniently chose not to share with its readers was how one of its own columnists, Frank Rich, wrote one of the earliest and most prominent pieces recharacterizing this nautical term as a smear tactic in his August 21, 2005, article "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan."

But before we get there, here's what the Times had to say Monday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Bingo):

Laura Ingraham, syndicated radio talk show host and now host of Just In on the Fox News Channel, filled in for Bill O'Reilly, syndicated radio talk show host, on his FNC Show The O'Reilly Factor on Friday, June 20.

And led off with her Talking Points Memo, in which she excoriated the left's call for the return of the Fairness Doctrine, dismantling and undermining every liberal (alleged) justification for its return.

The Fairness Doctrine would mean the end of conservative talk radio; death by governmental censorship. Let Congress know this can not happen.

Appearing by phone on Friday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC, former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg recalled for fill-in host Laura Ingraham how Tim Russert recognized there should be more to newsroom diversity than just diversity by gender and skin tone, that “you need ideological diversity.” Goldberg, who departed CBS News a few years after he pointed out their liberal bias, lamented:

I wish his colleagues understood that part of Tim Russert, too. That he knew that we needed all kinds of people in journalism because if we didn't have it we were going to get one-sided journalism.

Goldberg read aloud to the FNC audience a quote from Russert contained in an interview featured in Goldberg's 2003 book, Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite:

“I'm all for hiring women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us a different perspective. But just as well, let's have people with military experience. Let's have people from all walks of life. People from the top echelon schools, but people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the rich pageantry of America. I'm a great believer in racial diversity and gender diversity, but you need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity.” And then he emphasized, Laura: “You need it.”

Longtime reporter and columnist Robert Novak appeared on Fox's O'Reilly Factor on Tuesday and agreed with host Bill O'Reilly that media bias may not help Barack Obama that much. But that doesn't mean it isn't biased. Novak declared: "I’ve been covering presidential campaigns since 1960. I have always said I have never seen the media as much entranced by a candidate than when they were in my very first campaign, in 1960, when they were for JFK. But I'm telling you right now, the enchantment with Obama beats the JFK syndrome."

O’Reilly was amazed and mentioned how Novak recounts his early days in his memoir Prince of Darkness. But a bigger infatuation than with JFK?

Novak said "I believe it is. It is just such a feel-good atmosphere of my colleagues, my senior colleagues, people I’ve known for years. And I get it from some of the young people, too. They just feel this is such a wonderful thing, in the first place to have an African-American candidate, nominee, but also one that makes them feel so wonderful."

O’Reilly conceded that Obama was tremendously charismatic and could have his own TV show, but the he also makes them feel wonderful because they hate Bush and hate conservatives.

Erroneously recounting a Tuesday NewsBusters post I wrote about how, unlike ABC and CBS, the NBC Nightly News did not report the lowest U.S. death level in May for any month since the war in Iraq began, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Friday night made FNC's Bill O'Reilly his “Worst Person in the World” runner-up for “picking up some of his features from the hilariously inept right-wing Web site NewsBusters.” Olbermann proceeded to claim that NewsBusters had “criticized our colleague Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News for leading Monday's newscast not with the lower May casualty figures from Iraq, but with a story on how underfunded mass transit system can't keep up with increased ridership caused by the rape of the driver by Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their oil buddies.”

But Olbermann is the inept one. The June 2 NB item did not scold Williams for failing to lead with the development (nor, of course, for any “rape” of drivers by Bush), but for not mentioning it at any time in his newscast: “ABC and CBS on Monday night managed to squeeze in -- more than 20 minutes into their evening newscasts -- brief mentions of how in May the fewest number U.S. servicemen were killed in Iraq in any month since the war began five years ago. But not NBC Nightly News.”

Derogatorily impersonating O'Reilly, Olbermann recited O'Reilly's Wednesday hit on Williams as his “pinhead” of the night. Olbermann then asked and answered about O'Reilly: “Surprised that you're a blithering sociopath cutting and pasting items from NewsBusters? No, I am not...”

MP3 audio clip of Olbermann (1:13, 430 Kb). Windows Media video (4.8 MB)

FNC's Brit Hume highlighted Monday night how Scott McClellan's original book proposal, posted Saturday by the Politico, “promised to be quote 'supportive of the President' and take a penetrating look at how the liberal media slant their coverage of him.” Interviewing McClellan on Sunday's Meet the Press, Tim Russert highlighted the proposal and declared: “That's not the book you wrote.” (Matt Sheffield's Monday post on the Politco's discovery, “McClellan Originally Wanted to Attack Media, Defend Bush.”)

In his “Grapevine” item, Hume relayed how “McClellan writes that while many recent books have portrayed President Bush in a negative light, he would take a different approach, quote: 'I will directly address myths that have been associated with him, some deliberately perpetuated by activist liberals and some created by the media'” and:

I will look at what is behind the media hostility toward the President and his administration, and how much of it is rooted in a liberal bias.

Does the First Amendment guarantee a television host’s job security? Former Boston CN8 anchor Barry Nolan suggests just that.

Right of center Fox News host Bill O’Reilly recently received the Governors’ Award at the Boston/New England Chapter Emmy Awards. The local CN8 anchor objected to O’Reilly’s honor and passed out the public details of O’Reilly’s sexual harassment lawsuit. CN8 subsequently fired Mr. Nolan.

Nolan aired his protest on the left-wing website ThinkProgress.org claiming free speech has become a "myth" adding "in today’s America, speech is only ‘free’ when you are talking down to someone less powerful than you."

Unless Mr. Nolan is penning this letter from a prison cell, his free speech rights have not been violated. As an American, he certainly has the right to speak out against Bill O’Reilly. However, anchoring a news show is a privilege, not a right. CN8 had the right to fire Barry Nolan for his actions.

Nolan continued airing typical leftist talking points that journalists are intimidated from reporting the "truth" on Iraq and the War on Terror.

On Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, after discussing Scott McClellan's views on invading Iraq with FNC contributor Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly turned the discussion to McClellan's comments on Rove's role in the CIA leak probe. Rove complained that while the media were obsessed with him during the investigation, Richard Armitage, who was the actual leaker, was virtually ignored, and argued that if Armitage had publicly admitted earlier that he had leaked Valerie Plame's identity, "this would have all gone away. You'll notice when it came out that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak, the media rapidly lost attention." Rove also accused Joe Wilson of making untrue claims about his trip to Niger.

After playing a clip of McClellan from his Today show interview in which he complained that Rove and Scooter Libby had claimed they were not involved in the leak, Rove contended that it was Armitage who leaked Plame's identity: "The identity of Valerie Plame was leaked to Robert Novak by Richard Armitage. What I told Scott was I didn't know her name, didn't reveal her name, didn't reveal, didn't know what she did at the CIA, and that I wasn't the source for the leak." (Transcript follows)

On Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, during his opening "Talking Points Memo," FNC host Bill O'Reilly responded to Scott McClellan's contention, from that day's Today show, that he "felt like we were rushing into" war with Iraq in the run-up to the invasion, by showing a clip of former CIA Director George Tenet saying that before the war he "believed it in my core" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. FNC contributor Karl Rove further quoted a number of Democrats who proclaimed in the fall of 2002 the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, as they saw it.

After O'Reilly mentioned that Saddam Hussein deceived his generals into believing he possessed WMD, Rove recounted that, according to the Duelfer report and the Kay report, Saddam Hussein "was spending vast sums of money to keep together the experts and the dual use facilities so that when the West lost interest in this and the UN sanctions failed, he could reconstitute easily."

O'Reilly played the following clip of McClellan from the Thursday, May 29, Today show:

Two years ago, after FNC's Bill O'Reilly erroneously stated that American troops had massacred Nazi German troops at Malmedy, Belgium during World War II, even after the FNC host corrected the error, which apparently should have referred to American troops who retaliated against German troops after Malmedy because of that massacre, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, on his Countdown show, demanded that O'Reilly apologize to American troops, relaying anger expressed by some Iraq war veterans who heard about O'Reilly's mistake, and in one of his most egregious smears against the FNC host, painted O'Reilly as a defender of Nazis. The Countdown show even played an audio clip of voice actor Seth MacFarlane derogatorily calling the FNC host "that b*****d Bill O'Reilly," and telling the FNC host to "allow me to soil myself on you." (Transcripts follow)

Monday's The O'Reilly Factor, guest hosted by Laura Ingraham, showed a pre-recorded interview between FNC host Bill O'Reilly and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq and author of Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story. During the interview, Sanchez conveyed his disapproval at the mainstream media's coverage of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. When O'Reilly contended that the "New York Times and the liberal media" "went wild over Abu Ghraib" to "humiliate the Bush administration," Sanchez agreed: "To a large extent, you're absolutely right, because that is reflected in some of the questioning and some, obviously, in the press reports that occurred ... I believe that, in fact, we create the strategic defeat for America to a large extent by the way that we cover it in the press." (Transcript follows)

If only the Obama campaign would talk this tough about the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world . . .

Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Robert Gibbs, the communications director of the Obama campaign, called Bill O'Reilly a "bully," and vowed the campaign would "go directly at him."

View video here.

If you're a believer in the Larry Kudlow creed, that "free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," then look out, because George Soros is going to make you cringe.

A May 13 USA Today article by David J. Lynch profiled the Hungarian billionaire who said he sees traditional free market theory as "flawed."

"Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory's assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world," Lynch wrote.

"To Soros, the conventional approach is rubbish. Instead of a world of near-identical actors, coolly assessing their economic interests and acting with clear-eyed precision, he sees a world (and markets) governed by passion, bias and self-reinforcing errors," Lynch wrote. "Because fallible human beings are both involved in, and trying to make sense of, this world, they inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes then feed on themselves in ‘reflexive' ways that, when taken to extremes, result in situations such as the now-deflating U.S. housing bubble."

The Associated Press today wins first place for the most misleading headline in the MSM by saying that a study shows that Jon Stewart's Comedy Central "The Daily Show" show is somehow "a lot like" Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor." The Thursday May 8 report is flippantly headlined, "Study of 'Daily Show': It's a lot like O'Reilly," but the following report does not exactly confirm the headline. It appears that the AP's distorted headline was meant to equate "The O'Reilly Factor" to comedy in order to impugn the serious character of the hit Fox show and make of it but an exercise in comedy.

"I am not responsible" says Barbara Walters on Rosie O’Donnell’s extremist remarks on "The View." Appearing on the May 7 "O’Reilly Factor," host Bill O’Reilly brought up Rosie’s most controversial remarks, notably comparing "radical Christianity" to radical Islam and her famous 9-11 conspiracy theories editorializing it hurt Barbara as the founder and co-executive producer of the show.

Although Walters did not defend Rosie’s ravings, she refused to take responsibility asserting Rosie did not hurt her, "The View," or ABC. Additionally, the veteran journalist felt Rosie regrets some of those remarks. O’Reilly sharply disagreed and alluded to Rosie’s comments this week praising Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The relevant portion of the transcript is below.

Last week, NewsBusters reported the peculiar occurrence of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appearing alongside current Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a global warming ad funded by Nobel Laureate Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

Included in this piece was an explanation the former Speaker offered at his website regarding this matter which sparked largely uncomplimentary reactions in the rightosphere as well as from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Two days later, Gingrich appeared on Fox News's "O'Reilly Factor," and answered Rush (video embedded right):

Friday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC gave attention to revelations which first surfaced last February that employees of some Planned Parenthood clinics expressed a willingness to accept donations from callers who expressed the blatantly racist motivation of wanting to see more black children aborted, with a couple of the Planned Parenthood employees even seeming to express agreement with the racist statements. O'Reilly interviewed conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham about the attention she has given to the issue on her show, and played a clip of one of the phone calls. (Transcript follows)

In February, a conservative student publication at UCLA, The Advocate, revealed that it had called a number of Planned Parenthood clinics pretending to be interested in donating money to the organization while feigning a racist intention of wanting to reduce the number of black children. O'Reilly played one clip:

AUDIO OF UNIDENTIFIED MALE DONOR: Hello, Autumn. I'm interested in making a donation today.

AUDIO OF FEMALE PLANNED PARENTHOOD EMPLOYEE: Fantastic!

DONOR: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group. Would that be possible?

PLANNED PARENTHOOD EMPLOYEE: Absolutely.

A liberal bias is always easy to discern in newspaper writers when they tout liberal programs as informative and more conservative programs as deceptive. Take, for example, Kevin McDonough, a TV critic for the United Feature Syndicate (photo from UFS), touted by his bosses as lively and comprehensive in previewing TV seven nights a week with his "witty, insightful and occasionally offbeat approach to TV commentary." On Monday, he began:

Television has many powers. Its ability to distract (VH1), enter tain (“The Office”), inform (“The NewsHour”), deceive (“The O’Reilly Factor”), anger (ditto) and sell (QVC) are well documented.

But the moments when television reaches for the sublime, the beautiful, the poetic and transporting are few indeed.

Since the Rev. Jeremiah Wright revelations first shook the Obama campaign, one of America's so-called foremost civil rights leaders has been conspicuously silent about the subject.

With this in mind, Fox News producer Griff Jenkins went to the Take Back America convention in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to get Jesse Jackson's opinions about the controversy that virtually everyone in America is talking about.

Sadly, the Reverend wasn't interested in answering any of Jenkins' questions on this matter (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

On Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC analyst Karl Rove quoted an AP story by Christopher Wills from September 18, 2004, which had reported not only that Barack Obama had previously been open to a U.S. troop increase in Iraq when he was running for Senate, but had warned against a premature troop withdrawal as a "slap in the face to the troops fighting there" which could make Iraq "an extraordinary hotbed of terrorist activity." (Transcripts follow)

After devoting his "Talking Points Memo" to debunking Obama's recent claim that "there was no such thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq," Bill O'Reilly started his interview with Rove by asking why it is "bad strategy for Obama to go out and say that the Bush administration fouled it all up and we need to get out."

Tony Snow fans will love absolutely love this.

The former White House Press Secretary -- and all around good guy! -- is going to be Bill O'Reilly's permanent fill-in guest host on the "Radio Factor."

O'Reilly himself posted the good news at his website Thursday:

Former CBS correspondent and best selling author Bernard Goldberg noted the clear double standard NBC and MSNBC has on liberal versus conservative commentators. On the February 11 edition of "The O’Reilly Factor," Goldberg discussed the corruption at NBC News after the fallout from the David Shuster "pimped out" comments.

Goldberg alluded to left wing partisan commentator Keith Olbermann, without mentioning him by name, and noted that has anchored the election night coverage and moderated a presidential debate. Goldberg posed the question "would NBC News have Rush Limbaugh anchoring their election night coverage on MSNBC? Would they have an angry, ideological right winger like Michael Savage anchor their election night coverage on MSNBC?" He then answered his own question "of course not!" And added that "they do have a left wing bomb thrower doing it."

Noting presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain “gets good treatment” from journalists, former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg predicted on Thursday's O'Reilly Factor that since the “media like him because he's the one who pokes his thumb in Republican and conservative eyes, mostly conservative eyes,” that's "going to end" and so “as soon as it's McCain against Obama or Clinton the media goes over to the other side.”

In his weekly Thursday appearance with Jane Hall on the FNC show's segment assessing media behavior, Goldberg agreed with Bill O'Reilly that McCain has received favorable press, and then offered his forecast for how the media will turn on McCain as soon as he stands in the way of liberal becoming President:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was Howard Kurtz's guest on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, and unfortunately, viewers were treated to a litany of hypocrisies from both media personalities, so much so that it seemed like a lengthy advertisement for the controversial "Countdown."

Although Kurtz did present his guest as being mostly liberal and decidedly anti-Bush, he never once mentioned "Countdown's" actual ratings, or how Olbermann is often in last place in his time slot behind "The O'Reilly Factor," "Nancy Grace," and whatever is being offered by CNN.

You would think that since Kurtz works for CNN, he might have mentioned this.

But that wasn't the only hypocrisy Sunday morning, for when Olbermann made clear just how biased he is, Kurtz seemed to be totally oblivious (video available here, liberal website warning):

"I like how you think, senator," cooed "Late Show" host David Letterman in agreement with John Edwards's charge that "most of what" Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly says "is crap."

Letterman had asked the former senator about his "feud" with O'Reilly over Edwards's charge that the Bush administration is failing to care for military veterans to the extent that hundreds of thousands are winding up homeless.

The exchange came in a jovial January 22 interview in which Edwards joked about having Letterman as his running mate, or at the very least as a celebrity endorser a la Oprah Winfrey.

Video (1:04): Windows Media (1.96 MB) or MP3 audio (473 kB).:

It really was just a matter of time before one of the most hate-filled and vitriolic press members, whose material relies so strongly on reports from Clinton front organizations Media Matters for America and Think Progress, would start posting articles at one of the most hate-filled and vitriolic liberal websites on the Internet.

In fact, it's really a perfect fit, dontcha think?

As such, when MSNBC's Keith Olbermann posted his first blog at Daily Kos Monday, it shouldn't be surprising that he took the opportunity to bash Fox News's Bill O'Reilly.

After all, what would this man be without Bill, and those who hate him (h/t NB reader Thomas Stewart and Inside Cable News):

Candid criticism, or sour grapes towards a guy who's lapping MSNBC in the ratings? In any case, David Shuster and the rest of the Morning Joe crew took out after Bill O'Reilly this morning in the wake of the incident in which the Factor host was, shall we say, energetic in his efforts to speak with Barack Obama at a NH campaign event this weekend. Shuster called O'Reilly a "jerk" and "such a buffoon." Read accounts of the incident here, here and here.

View video here.

FNC's Bill O'Reilly on Thursday night centered his "Talking Points Memo" around the findings in the MRC's Media Reality Check study released earlier this week, "Good News = Less News on Iraq War: As Surge Succeeds and Casualty Rates Fall, ABC, CBS and NBC Lose Interest In Iraq War." O'Reilly pointed out how U.S. casualties and violence are way down from six months ago. Then, citing the MRC's numbers with a chart displaying them on screen, he observed how now "there is far less carnage in Iraq and far less reporting about the war. Since the surge began, Iraq war stories on the nightly news programs have dropped from 178 a month to 68 in November. Those stats were compiled by the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center and you can read the report online at mrc.org."

Video (2:35): Real (1.91 MB) and Windows (1.60), plus MP3 audio (1.19 MB).

Key findings from the study (also available here as PDF file) by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes:

Barbara Walters did not defend Rosie O’Donnell against Bill O’Reilly’s "Wicked Witch of the East" comment, but laughed and diverted to complimenting Whoopi Goldberg. "Not defending" usually fires up the former "View" moderator as was best exemplified on Rosie’s last live "View."

The veteran journalist and "View" creator appeared on the December 5 edition of "The O’Reilly Factor" to promote her upcoming special "The Ten Most Fascinating People of 2007." After discussing the special, Bill O’Reilly moved on to "The View" and noted that the ratings are up from the "Wicked Witch of the East" era last season. It led to this exchange between Walters and O’Reilly.

As NewsBusters reported over the weekend, liberal antagonist Helen Thomas was deliciously smacked down during last Friday's press briefing by White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly must have heard about this wonderful event, for on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor," the conservative host played some of the encounter for his viewers, and then offered his own opinion.

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment (video available here):