Wed, May 2, 2007 5:17pm ET

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Academic Study Proves O'Reilly Lies About Use of Personal Attacks

New Study Confirms Media Matters for America's Findings

O'Reilly Makes Personal Attack Every 6.8 Seconds in "Talking Points" Segment

Washington, DC - A new Indiana University study set to be published in the spring issue of Journalism Studies confirms Media Matters for America's previous findings that Fox News' Bill O'Reilly frequently makes personal attacks on The O'Reilly Factor, despite his frequent denials. According to news reports, the study found that O'Reilly makes a personal attack every 6.8 seconds during his "Talking Points Memo" segments. Mike Conway, an assistant journalism professor at Indiana University and a co-author of the study, said O'Reilly is "very big into calling people names. ... He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

The study, entitled "Villains, Victims and the Virtuous in Bill O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone': Revisiting World War Propaganda Techniques," analyzed six months of O'Reilly's program, looking at 115 editions of his "Talking Points Memo" segment. The study goes on to show the conservative host is "prone to inject fear into his commentaries" and "quick to resort to name-calling," a finding that directly contradicts O'Reilly's February 23, 2006, claim that he doesn't "do personal attacks" on his show -- a claim Media Matters has repeatedly debunked.

More on the study: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/5535.html

Key Findings:

  • O'Reilly referred to a person or a group by a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.

  • The study's results found a "consistent pattern of O'Reilly casting non-Americans in a negative light. Both illegal aliens and foreigners were constructed as physical threats to the public and never featured in the role of victim or hero."

More from Media Matters on O'Reilly and Personal Attacks

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602270001

In a segment with actor and activist Mike Farrell, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed that he doesn't "do personal attacks." O'Reilly made his remarks on the February 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, during a discussion with Farrell about gay marriage and the death penalty. As Media Matters for America has noted, O'Reilly has personally attacked individuals on numerous occasions, both on The O'Reilly Factor and on his radio show.

On The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly has referred to media writer and Fox News Watch panelist Neal Gabler as a "rabid dog" and said of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, "How nuts is this guy?" O'Reilly also said guest Christopher Murray "sounds like a fascist" for saying that that public institutions should not display religious symbols and called former Public Broadcasting System host Bill Moyers a "totalitarian." Students at the University of Connecticut who heckled right-wing pundit Ann Coulter during her campus appearance there earned the title of "far-left Nazis" from O'Reilly.

On his radio program, Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, O'Reilly has launched even more personal attacks. He called Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) a "left-wing nut," former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader a "loon," and Moyers a "secular, far-left fanatic." He described former president Jimmy Carter as "clueless" and "a fool" and said of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), "He's a sissy." More recently, O'Reilly called Dallas Morning News columnist Macarena Hernandez "incompetent," and a "Latina ideologue."

In one instance, on his radio show, O'Reilly called Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)a "nut" for introducing legislation to equip commercial aircraft with anti-missile systems to repel attacks from surface-to-air missiles; on his TV program, he later falsely denied that he'd made the remark, and subsequently claimed he "forgot" about it.

O'Reilly has equated Media Matters with the Ku Klux Klan, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and the Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels. He also referred to Media Matters as "the most vile, despicable human beings in the country."

From the February 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: You don't attack people personally.

FARRELL: I don't -- I don't get -- you know, I don't get any benefit out of attacking people.

O'REILLY: Do you object when some of your peers do?

FARRELL: I try to suggest that there are better ways to do it. But you know, people have the right to speak their minds, and some people are very exercised about the some of the things that the leadership in this country --

O'REILLY: But you lose credibility when you use personal attacks.

FARRELL: Some do. Some gain credibility, as you've discovered yourself.

O'REILLY: No, I don't do personal attacks here, mister. And that was a little, sneaky remark there.

FARRELL: Well, but --

O'REILLY: We don't do personal attacks.

FARRELL: But, Bill, you do.

O'REILLY: We'll be right back. No, we don't.

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