As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, Bill O’Reilly once again exposed MSNBC’s Al Sharpton for deceptively editing a video to blatantly misrepresent what the Fox News host said.
On the O’Reilly Factor Wednesday, media analyst and political commentator Bernie Goldberg claimed MSNBC is afraid to fire Sharpton; Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz said he’d start by canning the producer (video follows with transcript and commentary):
BILL O’REILLY, HOST: Al Sharpton continuing to be dishonest on NBC's air. Joining us from Washington, host of MediaBuzz on FNC Howard Kurtz, and from Miami, the purveyor of BernarndGoldberg.com, Mr. Goldberg. So Bernie, you're the president of NBC Universal. All right?
BERNIE GOLDBERG: Uh-huh.
O’REILLY: Full power over Sharpton. What do you do?
GOLDBERG: Well, I'd fire him, but I wouldn't have hired him in the first place. But that doesn't mean that the people who run NBC or Comcast, by the way, the parent company, are going to do that.
Every important Democratic politician running for high office has to go to Harlem and kiss
Al Sharpton’s ring. Okay? Every one of them. They're concerned about him. They have to pay him respect.So, if powerful politicians are doing that, are we supposed to believe that Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, or the people who run Comcast aren't equally - I'll use the word - afraid of him? I think they are, because who the hell knows what he's going to say the next day after he gets fired or what he's going to do? They're not going to take that chance, I don't think.
O’REILLY: If Sharpton were just a commentator like Bashir, you think he'd, did he do enough to be fired, Mr. Kurtz? Did he do enough to be fired? You know, putting his pressure and his color aside. Did he do enough to be fired in your opinion?
HOWARD KURTZ: Bill, I would fire the producer to start with, who made those kinds of editing mistakes. Then I, to call them mistakes is actually misleading. They are malicious attempts to deceive viewers – when they cut you off after you called Nelson Mandela a communist – which he was briefly - and didn't let you continue the thought on tape to say he was a great man.
Now, Al Sharpton has always worn two hats on MSNBC: civil rights activist, some would say racial ambulance chaser. He was intimately involved in the Trayvon Martin murder case, and then went on MSNBC and took one side. So clearly, he has, he is treated very, very differently than most talk show hosts.
O’REILLY: Okay. But again, if we, if NBC is not going to do anything, Bernie, this means all standards have collapsed at that news organization, have they not?
Of course they have.
NBC no longer has a news outlet. It is so in the tank for the current White House resident and advancing a liberal agenda that it might as well rename itself Obama News.
But something did come out of Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor.
As NewsBusters reported, O'Reilly called for MSNBC host Karen Finney to apologize for saying that he never would have gone to Soweto when he was in South Africa.
O'Reilly reported Wednesday that Finney did send him a written apology for her error.
Someone at MSNBC with principles and intergrity. Who'd have thought it?
She's not going to last long there, is she?
