Rick Sanchez Rips Bill O'Reilly For Lying About CNN And Murdered Army Recruiter (VIDEO) (UPDATED)

***UPDATED June 6*** Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was forced to apologize to CNN after anchor Rick Sanchez slammed O'Reilly for claiming that CNN didn't cover the murder of Army recruiter William Long at all during the day, instead waiting until Anderson Cooper's late night show to give it coverage. O'Reilly issued his apology to the news network after saying some "snide and surly guy on CNN" (Sanchez) pointed out that they had covered the story far more extensively than O'Reilly implied. (Video clip courtesy of Media Matters)

[WATCH]

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CNN's Rick Sanchez slammed Bill O'Reilly Friday afternoon for his claim that CNN didn't cover the murder of Army recruiter William Long until Anderson Cooper's featured the story on "AC360."

"CNN is supposed to be the news channel," O'Reilly said to Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp. "CNN says we don't do opinion, we do news. Only Anderson Cooper at 10:00 covered this story. Nobody else! All day long it wasn't news to cover an army recruiter gunned down in Arkansas?"

Sanchez then proceeded to play a "Daily Show"-like montage of clips of CNN anchors and reporters discussing the story all day.

"Let's see, that was Kyra Phillips, Tony Harris, Heidi Collins, Lou Dobbs, certainly you saw myself, you just saw David Mattingly there, Wolf Blitzer, we saw Kiran Chetry, we saw Erica Hill — that's nobody?" Sanchez asked.

"Let's add this up together now," Sanchez said. "We led with the story when it broke. We led with it again the next day. We analyzed the terrorism angle with experts and called former FBI agents to take us through it. And as a network, we covered the story umpteen times throughout the days, throughout all hours of those days. But Bill O'Reilly says he only saw it once. And since he only saw it once, well then that must be the truth. It doesn't matter what really happened. It doesn't matter what the record shows. All that matters is what Bill thinks he saw. We called Fox today, by the way. No response yet."

Sanchez ended with a comment on O'Reilly calling CNN the "news channel."

"O'Reilly did get one thing right," he said. "We here at CNN do say we're in the business of doing news. You know why? Because we are. And while we are far from perfect, we do check our facts before we say things. And if we get it wrong, we say so. And that is called reporting."

Watch:

Comments

[rayy]

FNC just has its letters scrambled. It should be NFC--no fact checking.

[j0em0mma]

Or just "Facts Not Checked"

[LeftRight]

I prefer "Facts? No Chance!

[LMT]

Orally distorts...that's news? Really? NOT!

[enlighteninglad]

Caught yet again. When will Faux News be off the air? I just can't take the pollution anymore.

[june82009]

http://dailynoz.blogspot.com/

[Dadeo]

Hey Rick, I'll bet you get a copy of Bold Fresh in the mail, everybody does.

[Ravyn]

I would love to know who over at Fox News put the screws on O'Reilly and told him he had to retract his story because I doubt he did this on his own.

[ebanks84]

The truth always prevail!

[mamacat]

Seriously, does anyone still pay attention to anything coming out of Faux News except the hard core right wingers? They have been proven to be liars so many times, that it now becomes obvious that it is safer to take anything they say as a lie, than it is to take anything they say on face value. Just saying, the odds of anything they say being accureate are so small, why take the odds?

Faux is able to make a very sizeable profit by spreading the latest right wing lies to the right-wing base. It is a formula that works for them, economically, and they have no reason to change. However, any thinking person who takes anything they say at face value is in for a big disappointment.

[fireW]

Finally, a way to stop O'Reilly from lying. He spends all day apologizing/making excuses for all his previous lying, and he simply has no time left to spout new ones. In lieu of waiting for viewers to wake up & stop watching (i.e. no more Bill-o show; this is an another way to solve the problem.

[LeftRight]

The problem is that this is the first time he's ever apologized....

[slarabee]

Not that it matters. In my experience people that watch Bill O' do not care about facts as much as they care about ideaology. People watching Bill apologized more than likely said "So what? CNN is nothing but a bunch of liberals anyway". Bill can get it wrong and to them he is still right becuase he tells them what they want to hear and strokes their passion glands.

[Drumbum2112]

"Fox news, the news you want when news isn't what you really want" Jon Stewart

[Johnagain]

I have to agree with your assessment of O'Reilly watchers. They may even acknowledge that O'Reilly got this one wrong, technically, but they just know he's basically right about everything he says. This is what 30 years of brainwashing produces. Uncritical, ideologically driven zombies who will follow their leaders off a cliff if asked.

[Acidic]

I always thought Sanchez was kinda fake, but I gotta give him credit where credit is due.

[neverbeenfooled]

If you're talking about O'Reilly, a more appropriate description would be space dust.

[lillis33]

Why is Mr. Sanchez taking this so seriously? Who is Bill O'Reilly, who are the people who believe everything he says?
And CNN isn't much better himself....."he's a MUSLIM.!" Are the american mass media people just unable to report actual news in a neutral voice? None of them'd get a job over here for sure.

[mamacat]

It's not called the Faux News channel for nothing.

[Texas4Patriots]

The "Faux News" mantra screeched by Dims is old and tired. Using the term makes an argument moot. FNC is the only channel that presents both sides of a topic.

[TheBaffler]

Yeah, they present the rightwing and extreme rightwing views.

[BMBTHC]

In B.O.'s world, if he only saw it on A.C.360, but not on any other CNN show, it must have only appeared on A.C.360, even though it seems that he only watched A.C.360, and nothing else on CNN. I'm guessing that when B.O. closes his eyes, he thinks he's invisible too.

[BillMelater]

O'Reilly apologies aren't worth the bandwidth they occupy. As far as I know he still has not got the Malmady Massacre right and refuses to apologize to WWII vets for that major gaf.

[Phreejazz]

"It's so pathetic watching this Sanchez character trying to be relevant. He's a nobody...and no amount of Fox bashing and loud-mouthing will ever give him viewership like O'Reilly (or even KO) enjoy...even when he's correct. CNN is a joke as well..."

Moronic. Ratings are meaning less and less. First, Nielsen ratings families are becoming something like a self-selecting sample. If you use Divo or a cable company's DVR, you can't qualify. Translation: more and more urban, educated viewers are being left out of their ratings. And for news, more and more people serious about the news are getting it from the Net. I love it when Faux rails against "mainstream media": they ARE mainstream media, and the ironic thing is, MS media is becoming a fringe phenomenon.

[Acidic]

Thank you, I did not no that about the ratings.

[RButler]

The other day, O'Reilly mocked the 'Jon and Kate plus 8' show for having almost 10 million viewers-a bad thing. Yet he constantly brags about his high ratings. Well, he's like a train wreck that people can't help but watch and he thinks he's got intelligent, thoughtful, 'clear thinking American' viewers. McDonald's and Burger King have many more customers than Spago or the 4 Seasons. Walmart has more customers than Nordstrom's. Ah, ratings. A measure of quality.

[fireW]

Excellent analogies, RB. Very real examples of the "It's popular, and therefore it must be good" myth that american pop culture so unfortunately thrives on.

[exhale09]

I CAN "help but watch O'Reilly"
I "just say no"

Ratings are a factor in how much these entertainers are paid. I am not about to contribute to Bill O's salary or anyone's salary on FAUX. I'd no more watch the Faux channel then turn on the 700 Club. SAME nauseating neurotic lunacy.

He has nothing to say that I want to hear, or that is credible, and I do not find him in the least bit, "entertaining"
I'd rather repeatedly hit myself in the head with a hammer.