What Bill O'Reilly Is Really Afraid Of
Rupert Murdoch has sicced his favorite henchman on the media reform movement, sending a crew from The O'Reilly Factor to dig for dirt at this weekend's National Conference for Media Reform.
During his Wednesday night broadcast Bill O'Reilly called Dan Rather's attendance at this week's Minneapolis conference proof positive that the former CBS anchor was farther than far left. "These people are crazy! Crazy!" O'Reilly said of the more than 3,000 people attending the conference. "He's hanging with real nuts!"
What O'Reilly is afraid to admit is that the media reform movement encompasses everyone who thinks our mainstream media -- that means you, Bill -- could do a lot better.
A Mercenary for Murdoch |
Call us crazy but you don't have to be liberal or conservative, rich or poor, white or black to know that Fox News' trash-talking, prime-time headliner is little more than an apologist for those in power -- and especially for his boss Rupert.
Murdoch's News Corp has spent tens of millions of dollars on well-heeled lobbyists who roam the halls of Washington to peddle policies that allow Murdoch to gobble up local media outlets without any respect for journalism or accountability to the public -- you know, people like you and me, whose interests O'Reilly claims to be looking out for in the "No Spin Zone."
O'Reilly's real aim is to discredit those of us who have caused his boss so much heartache -- who by our outspoken activism have shown that Murdoch's idea of media consolidation is bad for journalism, bad for democracy and just plain bad for America.
Our movement now numbers in the millions, and, as evidenced by last month's tremendous victory in the Senate, we've started chalking up wins against the lumbering media conglomerates that still control the news agenda for millions of Americans.
O'Reilly has every right to be scared because we're coming after him and the broken and dishonest media system he represents.
As he wrapped his segment O'Reilly pledged "on Monday, we're going to show you how crazy [media reformers] really are."
So if you're coming to the Conference, be on the alert for a Fox News crew stalking the halls of the Minneapolis Convention Center. Let them know what we really stand for.
Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr
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The real hint that the right is petrified of the media reform movement is the shrill repetition of the talking point that the attendants are all crazy and nuts. Despite Moyers and and Rather being very main stream, the branding of them as far-left and insane is necessary, especially in light of the possibility of a democratic sweep of government with a populist agenda. It could mean death to the conglomerates and a reenactment of some form of a fairness doctrine once more.
Did you all watch the other unedited version of Moyers' conversation with Porter Barry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2IZT4VgDY&eurl=http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/87510/
Enlightening.
It's telling that O'Reilly's attempt at rebuttal is to critique body language rather than the facts brought forward in the conversation, and had to admit that he does the same damed thing to intimidate his guests all the time!.
See Timothy Karr's Profile
O'Reilly followed up on his Monday program with a full -rontal assault on the media reform movement -- calling those who want better journalism "fascists" and "lunatics" -- people who are doing "a lot of damage to America." Thus far tens of thousands of people have sent a thank you letter to O'Reilly. The premise: An attack from a pseudo-journalist like O'Reilly is the highest form of compliment. We must be doing something right!
You can thank O'Reilly, too, at http://www.freepress.net/smackdown
Here is a good question for you.
We get cable TV. Mostly for occasional movies, Denver Broncos and the Daily Show and Colbert Report.
So why are we forced to subsidize Fox and Bill O Reilly?
We NEVER watch that channel. Never will.
So why are we paying for it? Why does a portion of our cable subscription go directly to Rupert Murdoch to finance what I believe to be wrong?
Ruptured Mudduck and his talking roids.............
From Laurence Britt's 14 Elements of a Fascist State:
No. 6 - A controlled or manipulated mass media.
Bush and the Republicans have waged a long campaign against journalism — denouncing it, infiltrating it, faking it, extorting it, distorting it, planting prostitutes in it and telling every manner of lie about it.
Spring-boarding off right-wing radio, in 1996 a propaganda TV news channel, Fox News, became the Pravda of the Bush White House.
Even Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that corporate media reporters had willingly rolled over for the Bush lies that caused war.
The rescue of Private Jessica, the “enemy attack” slaying of Pat Tillman, the fall of Saddam’s statue, the WDMs — all were lies planted in the news by the Bush administration.
To fake news, they added fake journalists. They bribed columnists. Local TV stations aired propaganda generated by Bush PR hacks that the stations pretended had been prepared by real reporters.
The $200-an-hour male prostitute named “Jeff Gannon,” a/k/a James Guckert, was able to get daily access to the White House press briefings for two years while working for a hack right-wing “news service.”
“You couldn't find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence - on the air and in print - of the very pundits and experts, self-selected ‘message multipliers’ of a disastrous foreign policy, who got it all wrong in the first place,” Bill Moyers said.
so true
Yeah, what about Gannon/Guckert? wouldn't any self respecting (legitimate) reporter want to know how he got access? Who sponsored him?
You left out the part about the Bush Administration treating the Media like another "special interest."
Crooks and Liars has a great video up on one of O'Lielly's henchmen going after Bill Moyers at the conference. What happened was hilarious. After Bill Moyers made mincemeat of the guy, other journalists took off after the henchman and wouldn't let him off. He got the tables turned on him and it was hilarious. The guy did not care much for it, needless to say.
What I can't understand is why PBS News does not go cable and pull a coup de grace on this whole nightmare news media we have today.
The P in PBS stands for PUBLIC - not everyone has access to, chooses to, or can afford to PAY for Cable T.V.
The Bushies have already tried to 'convert' PBS into a Faux Noise clone but the public was having none of it. Same thing happened when they tried to cut off funding.
What I can't understand is why PBS does not go cable and pull a coup de grace on this whole nightmare media we have today.
1/ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
2/ Even if they did find the money to buy a channel they would still have to convince the local distributors to put it in their "basic bouquet"
"These people are crazy! Crazy!" O'Reilly said of the more than 3,000 people attending the conference. "He's hanging with real nuts!"
As he wrapped his segment O'Reilly pledged "on Monday, we're going to show you how crazy [media reformers] really are."
Gosh, he's living up right-well to that "No-Spin Zone" philosophy, I'd say.
;-)
Like the old Irish joke that he is, O'Reilly just holds the light bulb and the room spins instead.
End of the tunnel? I have been so dissapointed. I have been afraid to talk my mind. I have been angry.
Polite, I tried my best to say nothing. When I finally did, it never came out right. It's like little squicks, air coming from the bottom of my lungs in the weirderst way. I wanted to talk for so long. And now I don't know how to.
Of course I wrote O'Reilly lots of times. He has chosen to be a dumb man. Honestly I think the guy is somewhat intelligent.
But, you see: DUMB SELLS THESE DAYS.. so that's what he chose to be..
I think O'Reilly is in for a surprise. So is Ingraham, Coulter, Rush, Hannity, Dobbs, Savage and the rest of the gang. Just wait and see.
It's not enough to be uniformed and dumb and therefore funny anymore. Dumb is finally out.
This I strongly believe.
As was suggested earlier, "news" organizations should report, rather than create the news. Just give me the available facts, please, and I'll analyse them for myself.
The article asks "What is Bill-O afraid of?".
The answer, simply stated, is the same as it is for Rush, Savage, Hume, and all the other right-wing "entertainment".
Irrelevance!
For these guys to keep "living the high-life", they must have a "cause" to rally their faithful around. They must find those "hot-button issues" that transcend rationale, and will appeal to the lack of critical analysis that their listeners embrace. They have to be "LOUD AND PROUD" of their collective ignorance; and the way they accomplish that is by consistency. If Murdoch can exercise near monopolization of the media, and they can collectively (effectively) silence any opposing views, then they can make the assumption that they are correct in their "world-view" and that they are truly the voice of the informed.
FOX NEWS:
It's putting your fingers in your ears and loudly uttering "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you" for adults.
This is what )'reilly get paid to do, provide a smoke screen for Murdock.
"Call us crazy but you don't have to be liberal or conservative, rich or poor, white or black to know that Fox News' trash-talking, prime-time headliner is little more than an apologist for those in power -- and especially for his boss Rupert."
Overwritten. O'Reilly is summedup in one of your words: little. But _small_ would have been preferable.
Someone below (whom I largely agree with) has said this: "Bill O'Rielly is free to speak his mind or belittle others and their comments if he chooses. That's his right."
But since when did the media or news anchors have this right? Is it really a right? Is that really journalism? Or is it what we have gotten used to over the past 15 years since Fox and its ilk began to infect journalism and the airwaves?
I grew up from late 60s to the 80s, and I can tell you that reporting, news, journalism has changed over the decades to a style that is now little more than entertatainment. That is the only way O'Reilly, a man who used to head up an entertainment nightly program, can have "earned" his own supposedly hard-news show on Fox.
No. To answer the question. A journalist is not entitled to belittle others and flag any comments he or she chooses (or lie, or exaggerate, or pontificate). That is not journalism. Never was. Should never be in the future.
We need to get back to news with integrity. The kind that informs the public and gives us what we need to make up our own minds and make our own choices. Not media that tries to mould our minds for us and tell us what to think or believe by withholding information, distorting the facts, lying, or belittle those that threaten their agendas.
You know, in a way, I don't think that journalism has changed - what has changed is what we are willing to allow pass for journalism.
Bill O. most certainly has the right to say what he pleases, with as much or as little fact to back up his claims as he pleases. But it's high past time that we, the public, start demanding that pundits and op-ed stop claiming to be "journalists." They are not. There's nothing wrong with op-ed, until you start pretending that it is fair and unbiased fact.
One of my co-workers was carrying on about Jon Stewart one day, and wanted to know why I think O'Reilly should be reined in but I have no problem with The Daily Show. Pretty simple, actually. Stewart is a comedian. A political comedian, but a comedian. Not only does he not pretend to be anything else, he is quick to point out that he is NOT a journalist. Shoot, his show is on Comedy Central, for crying out loud. O'Reilly, on the other hand, insists that he is a serious, unbiased, responsible journalist. And he's not even close.
I'm presuming that everyone here has seen Sidney Lumet's film of Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay, "Network" at least once?
And of course, Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd"?
Well Chinampas the answer may be because it seems the conservatives have lost their proverbial ways, and they are not only, not trusted anymore, but in many quarters, they are seem as the real "loons" or nut-jobs, and even more radical than the left .
This is how I see it, and I would also include that it would be their own fault.
These liberals, as you would call them, have no problem it seems, taking O Rielly to task for not being truthful, being very bias, and as most everyone see's it, just so "full of it".
Bill O'Rielly is free to speak his mind or belittle others and their comments if he chooses. That's his right.
But my question to you Chinampas is, so why should you or anyone else bad mouth the "left" or "middle" for exercising the same rights ??? Is your point of view the only one that matters ???
Whether or not conservative spin sells anymore is doubtful, especially after the last 8 years of the "conservative" control of the White House and Congress. They, the conservatives have now become the new "obstructionist".
Personally, I would have more fear of losing my God given freedoms and my freedom of speech from the right than the left !!!
That's my opinion. So respect that too !
My advice to you Chinampas, is to, as they say in Vegas, "read them and weep" pal, !!!
The same goes for 82ndVeteran1.
O'reilly does this and is subsidized by the American taxpayers. He may have a right to speak his mind but where does the Constitution say that the American taxpayers have to subsidize him for doing so. The airways are owned by the public, FYI.
Yes, "public" airway are owned by the public. Cable is another story, FYI.
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