Mother Jones, a feisty investigative magazine with a left-progressive slant, has been on the warpath lately in pursuit of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. The charge: serial exaggerations and outright whoppers of a sort that brought punishment for NBC’s Brian Williams.
Mother Jones, a feisty investigative magazine with a left-progressive slant, has been on the warpath lately in pursuit of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. The charge: serial exaggerations and outright whoppers of a sort that brought punishment for NBC’s Brian Williams.
Of course, anyone who has witnessed O’Reilly’s rise to the highest ratings in cable TV news might agree with those who wonder, what’s new? In other words, charging O’Reilly with exaggerating facts for dramatic effect is like calling Miley Cyrus a show-off.
Even so, I still wonder why so few people at self-described “fair and balanced” Fox News seem to care — and why they get away with it. The eruption over O’Reilly’s tall tales kicked up barely a ripple compared to the tsunami of rage and retribution that followed NBC’s Brian Williams’ stumble only a couple of weeks earlier.
Mother Jones journalists David Corn and Daniel Schulman alleged in early February that O’Reilly lied about being present in a “war zone” and “combat situation” during the Falklands War as a CBS reporter. O’Reilly argued back that he never explicitly said he had been in the Falklands. Only in a “war zone.” So what, he would say, if his definition of “war zone” stretches all the way to downtown Buenos Aires, where he really was?
But it was there where a much more serious case of fiction apparently was reported as fact. He covered a huge demonstration during which police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd and, according to one of O’Reilly’s books, “many were killed.”
Last week Mother Jones unearthed an old CBS video of O’Reilly reporting from that riot scene but, if “many were killed” none showed up in his reports or anyone else’s.
CNN interviewed seven former CBS News staffers who were there and said that no one died during the riots. One of them, correspondent Eric Engberg, said on Facebook: “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone.’ “
But unlike Williams, who had falsely claimed to have been on a helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2003 (his helicopter reportedly trailed the one that was hit), there was no internal network investigation of the O’Reilly allegations, no six-month suspension without pay and no loss of Fox’s espoused support for its star anchor.
Quite the opposite, Fox’s reaction offers a textbook version of stand-your-ground public relations. The network and O’Reilly whipped out the victim card and shifted attention away from O’Reilly and toward his detractors, particularly Mother Jones and the liberal media watchdog site Media Matters for America. “Fox News Chairman and C.E.O. Roger Ailes and all senior management,” said the network, “are in full support of Bill O’Reilly.”
O’Reilly went farther, which is sort of his brand. As he often likes to do, he accused the magazine of trying to smear him to hurt Fox and called the report’s co-author, David Corn, a liar and an “irresponsible guttersnipe,” among other choice epithets.
Yet early reports showed a ratings bump as the scandal drew attention. I’d say his job is safe.
I believe the main difference between how we treat O’Reilly and Williams is in our expectations. From the major network evening newscasts, we expect the real news with real facts and journalists who try to at least sound objective. From O’Reilly, we expect a lot of yarn spinning and angry shots on behalf of “the little guy in America” against all the “pinheads.”
O’Reilly helped set the expectations low. He is less of a conventional nightly news anchor than a partisan pundit. Think of him as a “Daily Show” for the blue-collar right but with fewer laughs.
In his own rare moments of modesty, he has described himself as a “bloviator” — and on that point, no one argues. Obnoxious as his televised pontifications may sound to some, he fulfills an emotional need for others. I, too, find myself tuning in occasionally when I don’t feel that I already have enough anger in my life. At least when I tune in to O’Reilly, I know what to expect.
Email Clarence Page at cpagetribune.com.