FNC’s O’Reilly Cites CMI Palin Study

November 18th, 2009 12:28 PM

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly stated last night that "the left is now peddling Sarah Palin as a shallow demagogue who would lead us to tragic circumstances" during a "Talking Points" segment about the former Alaskan governor's continued assault from the left. He cited CMI's 2008 study, "How the TV Networks Have Portrayed Sarah Palin as Dunce or Demon" as evidence.

O'Reilly stated:

A study last year by the Culture and Media Institute, a conservative group, examined network news coverage of Mrs. Palin from September 29th to October 12th as she campaigned. It was 69 stories about the governor. 37 of them were negative, 30 neutral, just two, two positive. Twenty-one of the stories portrayed Sarah Palin as unintelligent or unqualified. Eight stories used clips from ‘Saturday Night Live' to ridicule her. ABC News was hardest on Mrs. Palin, closely followed by NBC.

The text of the study is available here.