Bill O'Reilly - The 'Fair & Balanced' Bully

The O'Reilly-Sucks Truth Zone
http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/

Bill O'Reilly is host of The O'Reilly Factor on the FOX news channel. O'Reilly poses as an objective independent news analyst with a no-spin zone. In reality, he's a biased Republican with an all spin-zone.

****** Fox New's Chronic Fabricator - Bill O'Reilly

Mr Ken45 began regularly watching the Fox News and CNN cable news broadcasts during the Florida election debacle in 2000. The laziness, passivity and dishonesty of many of the commentators on both networks was, and continues to be, breathtaking.

Bill O'Reilly's reporting (the O'Reilly Factor) stands below even this rabble. I will just give two examples of O'Reilly's unbelievable ignorance from my own experience, before quoting a professional.

1) Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, O'Reilly had a hedge fund manager on his show as a guest. The stock market had remained closed in the week of the attacks (9/10-9/14), and fell sharply in the entire week that followed. Bill O'Reilly proceeded to harangue his guest in the pompous and bullying tone that is his trademark. "Anybody who sells stocks is unpatriotic, even treasonous", ranted O'Reilly!

The fund manager tried to explain to 'Mr. Simpleton' that the concept of 'fiduciary responsibility' might legally compel one to sell stocks to stem further losses in clients' accounts. But O'Reilly just repeated his patriotic mantra, ad nausem.

All this bully knows is to wrap himself in the flag and insult his guests, no matter what their expertise, qualifications and accomplishments.

2) In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there was much discussion about the U.N.'s role and the various resolutions being considered. One evening O'Reilly was discussing the views of the permanent members of the Security Council - and was railing against France's eminently sensible position (remember the O'Reilly inspired French boycott?) of allowing the U.N. inspectors to do their job.

But I was really shocked when the Mr. Know-Nothing began discussing 'another permanent member of the Security Council - Germany!' He was finally corrected by a guest - but the implications of this gaffe are quite amazing. It indicates a complete lack of historical perspective regarding how the United Nations came to exist! Did this pompous fool ever hear of the San Francisco Conference, the Atlantic Charter - or, for that matter, which countries made up the 'Allies'-which of course, became the Security Council (U.S., U.S.S.R., China, Great Britain, France). Uhhhmm, Bill-all these countries fought against Nazi Germany.

Of course, I am sure O'Reilly would deny these two incidents ever happened. As Al Franken documented in many footnotes in his book "Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them", O'Reilly's stock-in-trade are fabrications, misstatements & half-truths-even after he's caught. It's no wonder - his actual fund of knowledge could fill a thimble.

And Media Matters for America, which monitors the press in real time, is constantly pinpointing factual inaccuracies and Republican spin that O'Reilly tries to foist "on the folks" as "fair and balanced". O'Reilly appears almost daily in the section of the the sidebar reserved for Media Matters in MrKen45s Blog.

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I am currently reading Lapdogs-How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (2006), by Eric Boehlert. It is sharply critical of the news media, which the author says "has utterly failed in their watchdog duty to the public". The following is some of what he had to say about Bill O'Reilly---

--http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743289315/
002-6532502-4307212?v=glance&n=283155

'...That fear of conservative press critics - and the desire to mollify them - also explains why right-wing extremists are treated like serious commentators by the Main Stream Media (MSM) and so rarely challenged. Interviewing Fox News's chronic fabricator Bill O'Reilly, ABC's Good Morning America co-host Charlie Gibson cooed, "I always have a good time talking to him." Previewing a November 2005 speech Bush was giving on Iraq's future, NBC's Today show invited O'Reilly on the program to comment on world affairs, despite the fact O'Reilly announced he had no intention of listening to Bush's Iraq speech. O'Reilly did, though, compare Democrats to Hitler sympathizers on Today, a tasteless attack that host Katie Couric let pass without comment {Italics MrKen45}. (It was left to a late-night comedian, David Letterman, weeks later, to actually press O'Reilly on his hateful rhetoric when O'Reilly appeared on CBS's The Late Show...)'