O'Reilly and FNC
The film "Outfoxed" portrayed Fox News in a less than favorable light, amking them out to be far right wing distorters of fact. Bill O'Reilly is labeled as a conservative, but it should be clear to anyone who knows anything about this film (or even anyone who has watched it) that the film-makers themselves have distorted the case. If I wanted to make a similar film, portraying FNC and O'Reilly as "fair and balanced" I could do so easily, taping a years' worth of FNC, and then deleting scenes that didn't fit my thesis. For instance, as I mentioned in class, O'Reilly's only strongly opinionated headliner on Tuesday's episode was against conservative talk radio. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he breifly ran through the various stances of Bush and Gore and stated who he felt was stronger on different issues -- statements along the lines of "Bush's education policy is the stronger; Gore's health care policy is better." For every good thing he had to say about Bush, he had something good to say about Gore. He did criticize Vice-President Gore for not appearing on the Factor, but then-Governor Bush did appear, so the criticism was not unfounded. In one of his books, in which he divided public personalities into "good," "bad," and "ridiculous," he placed quasi-socialist (my label, not his) New York congressman Charlie Rangel in the good category. He has also been quite complimentary of Congressman Harold Ford Jr. of TN. The Factor was the 1st place I heard about the swiftboat vets -- O'Reilly was criticizing them. Bill is against the death penalty, believes in global warming, has said on multiple occassions that President Bush owes America an explanation about WMDs. He recieves e-mails on a regular basis accusing him of being a closet liberal (maybe they're staged -- who knows). And as someone who saw the undoctored version of the Glick interview, the guy had it coming. He made more statements than wht were shown in the video equating the US with Al Qaeda (i.e. Grenada). As far as everything else, the video showed clips of reporters making statements, cutting out the portions in which the reporters notified the audience that they were quoting politicians. I have seen an interviewee who was not harshly questioned when he stated that he "never believed in Al-Qaeda - Iraq connections." As for the criticism of the choice of liberals on FNC, I have heard many liberals say that they consider Alan Colmes far more respectable and honest than Franken. I also forgot that Rob Reich (sp), Pres. Clinton's labor sec. is a contributor. O'Reilly had a Kerry advisor (his probable sec of state if elected -- can't remember his name) and nothing outrageous was said. The interview made me feel better about the possibility of Kerry becoming president. As far as the former FNC employees go, maybe they're telling the truth, maybe they're just trying to get a job with CNN or MSNBC by slamming a competitor. In short, the video, as it was funded by the udeniably far left moveon.org, cannot be considered an unbiased source. Of course George Soros thinks Fox is too conservative -- he probably thinks Bill Clintion was too conservative.