FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly quoted his own program to defend FOX from the charge that its intensive coverage of largely discredited allegations by anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth suggests the channel has a pro-Republican agenda. O'Reilly used this defense even though he and FOX News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes have both insisted that a news channel's objectivity should be assessed based on its “straight” reporting and “hard” news programs, not on opinion programs like O'Reilly's.
O'Reilly read from an August 24 article by New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley. Stanley -- whom O'Reilly called “very biased” -- wrote that FOX News Channel has “relished the controversy the most, seizing hungrily on charges that Mr. Kerry lied to gain his medals.”
From the August 24 edition of The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: Ms. Stanley neglects to tell her readers that [FOX News anchor] Chris Wallace and I spent six minutes getting the record straight last night, and we could not -- I repeat -- could not have been more fair to Senator Kerry. Now, here's a personal message from me to you, Ms. Stanley: Knock it off. Evaluate what we do here fairly, all right, Madame? Get a transcript of last night's [O'Reilly] Factor and publish it so your readers will know the truth. Your blatant bias against FOX News is ridiculous and belongs on one of those bomb-throwing websites, not in a national newspaper. Boy, enough's enough with these people, I've got to tell you.
Though O'Reilly's August 23 segment with Wallace did cast a critical eye on the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations, Media Matters for America has documented that the channel has devoted exhaustive attention to the anti-Kerry group's accusations on its “hard news” shows, such as Special Report With Brit Hume, FOX News Sunday, and especially on its “nightly debate program” Hannity & Colmes. These programs' hosts have frequently allowed the Swift Boat Veterans' demonstrably false claims to go unchallenged.
O'Reilly's use of an example from his own show to defend FOX News Channel against Stanley's accusation flies in the face of comments Ailes made in June. After Los Angeles Times editor John S. Carroll made a similar accusation, Ailes wrote in a scathing June 2 Wall Street Journal op-ed that Carroll had “confused our highly rated news analysis and opinion shows like Bill O'Reilly with our hard news coverage. Mr. Carroll cites not a single example of what he calls 'pseudojournalism' from our actual news coverage. He cites only Bill O'Reilly's opinions.”
O'Reilly has used the same distinction to defend himself against the charge that he has regularly advanced a conservative agenda on his show. On the August 2 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly read aloud a viewer e-mail: "[Democratic Senator John] Kerry makes your skin crawl. We all know it. You're much more interesting when you're slaying liberals and playing objective journalist." In response, O'Reilly responded: "[F]or the umpteenth time, this is an opinion program. The hard news people give you objective journalism."
A similar exchange occurred on the March 28, 2003, edition of the program, when O'Reilly informed a guest who complained that FOX was plugging the Iraq war, “I think the people -- and I -- you might be in this category -- don't understand the difference between analysis shows and hard news programs. See, all day long, we're [FOX News Channel] hard news programs. You don't get the kind of pushing the war that you might get from -- I support the war -- from me or Hannity or one of those guys.”