After attacking “far-left smear websites” again, O'Reilly asserts: “If we make a mistake, we tell you”

Written by Joe Brown

Published

On January 3, Bill O'Reilly warned that “far-left smear websites” are “recording every word I say,” and, as a result, “we have to record every word I say, because I know they'll distort, they'll lie, they'll take it out of context.” He then added: “Of course, I'm gonna make mistakes,” but said that: “If we make a mistake, we tell you.”

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On the January 3 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly warned that “far-left smear websites” are “recording every word I say,” and, as a result, “we have to record every word I say, because I know they'll distort, they'll lie, they'll take it out of context.” He added: “I do three hours of commentary a day. Of course, I'm gonna make mistakes and misstatements. Anybody would, except Jesus.” Further, he asserted: "[W]e are very methodical in what we do and how we do it. If we make a mistake, we tell you."

From the January 3 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, which also featured Fox News' Fox & Friends co-host E.D. Hill:

O'REILLY: Look, President Bush knows -- he knows -- 75 percent of the American media is out to get him -- not to cover him, not to scrutinize him, not to be skeptical of what he says -- to get him. When you're in a position like that -- and I'm in the exact position -- I mean, we have these nutty, far-left smear websites recording every word I say, so we have to record every word I say, because I know they'll distort, they'll lie, they'll take it out of context. We know what they're doing. So, we are very methodical in what we do and how we do it. If we make a mistake, we tell you. I do three hours of commentary a day. Of course, I'm gonna make mistakes and misstatements. Anybody would, except Jesus. He'd probably be the only one who could get away with three hours of bloviating every day and not make a mistake.

HILL: Bloviating?

O'REILLY: Just -- it's just an example.

[Laughter]

O'REILLY: But, every mistake or misstatement I make is immediately on a [web]blog. You see? Now, everybody knows the game, so it doesn't hurt us. But the Bush administration should have known that somebody was gonna whisper into The New York Times' ear, “Hey, they're eavesdropping,” and taken steps to tamp it down, you know, to just -- now, they did, by keeping the Senate and Congress in the loop. That's a big piece of evidence that the Bush administration wasn't trying to hide anything, but they should have done the other thing, in my opinion, if it was practical. And I believe it probably was.