As NewsBusters reported Sunday, while George Soros likened Rupert Murdoch and Fox News to Nazis on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," the host never once challenged the far-left billionaire on any of his wild accusations.
On Monday's "O'Reilly Factor," former CBS Newsman Bernie Goldberg blasted "supposed journalist" Zakaria for sitting there "like a bump on a log when somebody is making crazy statements like that" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly,reporting tonight from Southern California.
And in the "Weekdays with Bernie" segment, far-left zealot George Soros,a billionaire who funds many radical left concerns, is very angry with FOX News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE SOROS, BILLIONAIRE: FOX News makes a habit. It has imported the methods of George Orwell, you know, Newspeak, where you can tell the people falsehoods and deceive them. And you wouldn't believe that an open society and a democracy these matters can succeed, but actually, they did succeed. They succeeded in Germany where the Weimar Republic collapsed, and you had the Nazi regime follow it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Joining us now to react from Miami, the purveyor of BernardGoldberg.com, Mr. Goldberg.
Here's what I don't understand. Every once in a while Soros comes down from his plush board room, or his private jet lands near CNN headquarters; and he gets out, and he says this dopey stuff. Why? He is not changing anybody's mind, is he?
BERNIE GOLDBERG, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, I don't think that's what motivates him. I think he, honest to God, believes every syllable of what he said. I think if you hooked Mr. Soros up to a lie detector while he made that statement, I don't think the needle would dance one bit.
But I will tell you it takes two to tango, and he did that interview with a supposed journalist for CNN, a supposedly middle-of-the-road news organization, named Fareed Zakaria. And when he said those things, Zakaria didn't ask him one challenging question.
When Soros said that FOX is basically inherently dishonest, Zakaria didn't say, "Well, aside from your dispute with Mr. Beck, Glenn Beck, can you give me an example or two of this dishonest?"
When he made the insane statement that FOX's supposed dishonesty might open the way for an American fascist dictatorship -- I mean, think about that -- Zakaria never said, "Really? Really, Mr. Soros?"
So Soros says these things because he believes them. He's a man of the left. We shouldn't expect anything different. But Zakaria is supposedly a journalist, and a journalist doesn't just sit there like a bump on a log when somebody is making crazy statements like that.
Indeed. As I noted concerning this interview Sunday:
Clearly enjoying the conservative bashing, the CNN host moved in another predictable direction asking his guest, "What do you think of this broader movement of the Tea Party, of -- of what's going on on the right?"
Honestly, what did Zakaria think Soros was going to say?
SOROS: Look, I think the people in the Tea Party are very decent people, hard-working. They've been hit by a force that -- that comes from somewhere which they can't fully understand, and -- and they are being misled. And they are misled by people who are using it for their selfish purposes, namely to remove regulations and -- and reduce taxation. So reduce taxation and regulation, and they are being used and deceived.
So the Tea Partiers are all idiots being misled into thinking loosened regulations and lower taxes are bad. Meanwhile, Soros funds organizations dishonestly trying to convince people that more regulations and higher taxes are good.
Not surprisingly, Zakaria missed both the hypocrisy and the irony.
I guess that makes him easily deceived and misled.
At the end of Goldberg's discussion about Soros, the subject of the Wisconsin union battle was raised:
O'REILLY: Now, "Talking Points Memo," I think we laid out a pretty persuasive case based on facts, not emotion, that the news coverage of the Wisconsin battle has not been honest.
GOLDBERG: Right. Well, let me give you a couple of examples to back that up.
First, do you remember during the tea party demonstrations there were lots of references to the crowds as being overwhelmingly white. I was never quite sure what the relevance of that was. But the New York Times, for example, thought it was relevant, because they would write stuff like that.
These crowds are beyond overwhelmingly white. These crowds are almost 100 percent white. And there's no reference to race. Jeez, isn't that strange?
The reason is the mainstream media or so-called mainstream media only brings race into things when conservatives are involved and they want to smear them. So, that's one thing.
Excellent point. This was a common media meme about the Tea Party since it emerged as a powerful force in April 2009. Yet I don't recall any so-called journalists in the past few days talking about the lack of minorities in the crowd at Madison's Capitol.
But that wasn't the only thing bothering Goldberg about the Wisconsin coverage:
GOLDBERG: The second one, the easy second one are the signs. One crazy person at a Tea Party rally with a Nazi sign and it's big news.
O'REILLY: Right.
GOLDBERG: The media isn't as passionate about these signs that compare the governor to Hitler, Mubarak, and the Taliban. Not nearly as passionate in covering them.
No, they certainly aren't, proving once again how totally corrupt they are.
(H/T Mediaite)
