From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Bill O'Reilly is a television show host of a highly-rated political cable news show, The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel in the United States. The self-proclaimed political independent also hosts a radio program syndicated by Westwood One called The Radio Factor. O'Reilly has authored four books, one of which is a novel. O'Reilly's political opinions vary from topic to topic as discussed below, and he criticizes media outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio as being predominantly liberal.
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O'Reilly was born on September 10, 1949 in New York City, New York. He and his family moved to Levittown, New York, located in Nassau County, New York on Long Island when he was a toddler. O'Reilly's critics -- most notably Al Franken -- claim that he did not grow up in Levittown, but instead in its more affluent suburb, Westbury. However, O'Reilly maintains that he grew up in the Westbury section of Levittown, a claim that was confirmed in October, 2003 by the vice president of the Levittown Historical Society. [1] O'Reilly also points to the fact that he was not eligible to attend Westbury High School as evidence of his Levittown roots, since he did not live within the Westbury school district.
O'Reilly attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York, an all-male Marianist school where he played goalie on the ice hockey team. After graduating from Chaminade, O'Reilly advanced to Marist College, a small, co-educational private school in Poughkeepsie, New York. While at Marist, O'Reilly played quarterback, place kicker, and punter on the football team, and also was a columnist for the school's magazine, The Circle. He also played semi-professional baseball during this time, pitching for the Brooklyn Monarchs. He spent his junior year of college abroad, attending school at the University of London.
O'Reilly married in 1995 and is the father of one young daughter and an infant son. He does not discuss his family publicly due to security concerns, including past death threats.
After graduating from Marist, Bill O'Reilly moved to Miami, Florida, where he taught English and history at a Jesuit high school for two years. After leaving Miami, O'Reilly returned to school, earning a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University. O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring positions in Scranton, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Oregon, Hartford, and Boston. In 1980, he anchored his own program on WCBS-TV in New York and later became a CBS News correspondent. While at CBS News, O'Reilly covered the wars in the Falkland Islands and El Salvador, amongst others. During his stints in Dallas and Denver, he won two Emmy Awards for journalistic excellence. In 1986, O'Reilly joined ABC News as a correspondent on ABC World News Tonight. In three years, he appeared on the show over one hundred times, receiving two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting.
In 1989, O'Reilly joined the nationally syndicated Inside Edition, a tabloid television program (also known as "infotainment"). He started as senior correspondent and backup anchor for David Frost, but soon took over the anchor chair when the viewers found him more appealing. In 1995, O'Reilly left Inside Edition to enroll in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he received a Master's Degree in Public Administration. Upon leaving Harvard, Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of the then startup Fox News Channel, hired O'Reilly to anchor The O'Reilly Report, which was soon renamed to The O'Reilly Factor as O'Reilly was quickly gaining a reputation as a tough interviewer.
O'Reilly's television show The O'Reilly Factor discusses political and social issues of the day featuring both conservative and liberal guests. His show is famous for its direct, combative approach, with O'Reilly often getting into heated arguments (and sometimes shouting matches) with guests. While he tends to turn some people away from his show with his brash attitude, he has attracted millions of viewers with his confrontational interviews. O'Reilly has pundits and elected officials as guests and doesn't hesitate to interrupt them or to disagree, sometimes even telling guests to "shut up." He decrees on his show that it is a "no spin zone" and that "the spin stops here." O'Reilly often challenges spin from guests more aggressively when they hold views opposing his own (see below for example views).
O'Reilly ends each episode of The Factor by reading mail sent in by viewers. The mail read by O'Reilly is usually divided between viewers that like or agree with him and viewers that hate or disagree with him.
Media criticism of O'Reilly, about both his politics and his style, has come more often from liberal or left-wing outlets such as Slate and FAIR, but conservative or right-wing outlets such as AIM have criticized O'Reilly for much the same reasons.
In 2001, The O'Reilly Factor passed Larry King Live to become the most watched cable news program in the United States. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, O'Reilly was honored by The National Academy of Arts and Sciences for his coverage and analysis of the events. He has also received praise from viewers and readers, most notably his being named the third most popular U.S. television personality of 2003 in a Harris Poll, behind Oprah Winfrey amd David Letterman. [2] He led the voting among people over age 65, as well as Republicans.
Al Franken's 2003 book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right features a photograph of O'Reilly on the cover and criticizes him inside. He accuses O'Reilly of lying and distorting to make himself look better. For example, Franken says O'Reilly implied the television show Inside Edition won two Peabody Awards for journalism while he was there, when it actually won the Polk Award over a year after O'Reilly had left. Franken does not mention the multiple times O'Reilly went on-air to correct his mistake.
O'Reilly also claimed to be a registered independent when he was actually a registered Republican. When newspapers published this fact, O'Reilly claimed it was a clerical error and attacked the newspaper publishers as liars. Finally a copy of the registration was found, showing a box labeled "Republican" clearly marked, next to a box labeled "Independent."
O'Reilly responded to the book by calling Franken a "defamation peddler" while refusing to name any specific inaccuracies. Fox News sued for trademark infringement over the use of the phrase "fair and balanced" in the book's title. (O'Reilly said he encouraged the lawsuit on "Tim Russert" on October 4, 2003 and that he agreed with Fox News's argument. Later, in an interview with Terry Gross on the NPR program "Fresh Air" on October 8, 2003, O'Reilly stated that he had nothing to do with Fox News's lawsuit. O'Reilly said he had considered suing Franken for defamation but was told that as a public person the standard of proof would be too high to sustain a lawsuit.) The Fox News lawsuit was dismissed by the judge as "wholly without merit."
In March 2004, Franken launched a radio talk-show named The O'Franken Factor. The program broadcasts on the new Air America Radio network. Franken joked on an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman and to CNN that he hopes O'Reilly will sue Air America Radio for trademark infringement because of the publicity it would generate for Franken's new program. O'Reilly has not publicly commented on Franken's choice of title.
Bill O'Reilly has criticized Bill Moyers, the host of NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS, on multiple broadcasts of The O'Reilly Factor, and Moyers has in turn accused O'Reilly of lying. In 2002, O'Reilly said Moyers called him a "warmonger," implied that Moyers was making big money by selling videotapes of his program, and that Bill Moyers made contributions to the Columbia Journalism Review to buy the duPont-Columbia Award. Bill Moyers responded in print that he never called O'Reilly a warmonger, that his share of distribution money from the show is minuscule, and that the Columbia Journalism Review doesn't pick the winner of the duPont-Columbia Award [3]. In 2003, O'Reilly criticized Bill Moyers again, saying that Moyers' position that taxes should be raised is "classic socialism" and that he "can't understand why Bill Moyers just doesn't move to Havana." [4]
O'Reilly disagrees vehemently with the common belief that he is a conservative, preferring to call himself a traditionalist and a populist. Although O'Reilly emphasizes that he is an independent, this claim is intensely disputed. Critics attest that O'Reilly has close ties to the Republican party and other conservative groups. Arguments include O'Reilly's voter registration, which was changed from Republican to Independent when reported by the Washington Post in 2000. Also mentioned was O'Reilly's keynote speech at David Horowitz's conservative "Restoration Weekend" event, taking place at the Republican convention in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, O'Reilly's opinions contain a mix of traditionally conservative and liberal positions:
It should be noted that O'Reilly's position on illegal immigration does not follow a traditional conservative standpoint, but is based rather on protecting national security.
A viewer once wrote to give O'Reilly a rough statistical analysis of his political viewpoints and found O'Reilly to take more conservative viewpoints roughly 60% of the time, more liberal viewpoints 30% of the time, and completely moderate viewpoints 10% of the time.
In his book The O'Reilly Factor, he answered the question of his political affiliation this way: "You might be wondering if whether I'm conservative, liberal, libertarian, or exactly what... See, I don't want to fit any of those labels, because I believe that the truth doesn't have labels. When I see corruption, I try to expose it. When I see exploitation, I try to fight it. That's my political position."
However, Bill O'Reilly acknowledged that from 1994 until December 2000 he was a registered to vote as a Republican when the Washington Post was about to expose his party registration. O'Reilly said it was the result of a clerical mistake, which has since been corrected, and he is now a registered independent. "I've always been an independent," he says. "I always split my ticket. I vote for the person I think is best." [7]
Critics contend that O'Reilly often makes up facts and figures to support his points. FAIR, a left-leaning media watchdog group, has published an entire book, The Oh Really? Factor, documenting the false accusations and inaccurate statements that O'Reilly has made on his show.
They also complain that O'Reilly distorts the news by framing it through his bias. After the Supreme Court ruled that public hospitals could not test pregnant women for drugs and send the results to the police without consent, O'Reilly said "Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment" (O'Reilly Factor, March 23, 2001).
Guest Jeremy Glick called 9/11 an "alleged" attack that America essentially brought upon itself, accused O'Reilly of using 9/11 to fit his own needs, and stated that President George H. W. Bush trained the Moujahadeen in Afghanistan. O'Reilly shouted "Shut up! Shut up!" and asked the director to "cut his mic." He apologized for the display immediately afterwards and said that he did not know that Glick would present himself in such a manner.
During the 2000 election, O'Reilly suggested Al Gore was running "on a quasi-socialistic platform" with "work and production being supervised by the government." FAIR claims that O'Reilly went easy on the Bush administration when it initially entered office even though he'd been extremely tough on President Clinton. "President Bush ran on the slogan 'reformer with results,'" he said, "That sounds good to me."
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