After a caller alleged that Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock had “slandered” FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly during Brock's September 13 appearance on CNBC's Capital Report, O'Reilly dismissed the caller's concern, saying, “That's just Joseph Goebbels Nazi stuff.”
From the September 14 broadcast of The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:
CALLER: Hi, Bill. Hi, E.D. [Hill, O'Reilly's co-host] Great show today.
O'REILLY: Thank you.
CALLER: You want some information on someone who's slandered you -- Brock on the Capital Report Monday.
O'REILLY: Yeah, I mean, but we don't care about him. I mean --
CALLER: I mean, he drove me crazy 'cause --
O'REILLY: Don't even -- look. Don't waste your time on that kind of stuff.
CALLER: Yeah, OK. I agree. I agree.
O'REILLY: All right. That's just Joseph Goebbels Nazi stuff.
CALLER: All right. Absolutely.
O'REILLY: Right. So don't even what -- don't even -- OK.
Following is the portion of Brock's appearance on Capital Report in which he mentioned O'Reilly. Brock's interlocutors were his fellow guest, Brookings Institution senior fellow emeritus Stephen Hess, and show co-anchors Gloria Borger and Alan Murray:
BORGER: OK. I want to play for all of you something that Bill O'Reilly, obviously a FOX News anchor, said about this Carville-Begala flap. [James Carville and Paul Begala, co-hosts of CNN's Crossfire]
O'REILLY [clip from the September 7 edition of FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor]: If me and Dick Morris [critic, author, and FOX News Channel political analyst] signed on for the Bush campaign tomorrow, the press would go crazy. They'd go through the roof. Yet Begala and Carville can do it on CNN and you did -- not one article or one reference in the elite media, which shows you how hypocritical they are.
MURRAY: All right. That's wrong on both counts, isn't it?
BROCK: Sure, it is. I mean, that's apples and oranges. I mean, the media -- it would be a big story if Bill O'Reilly --
MURRAY: Well, we --
BROCK: -- signed up with Bush because --
BORGER: Right.
MURRAY: Well, we did when Roger Ailes [FOX News Channel chairman and CEO] was sending memos to the Bush administration.
BORGER: Right.
BROCK: That's absolutely right. And, you know, O'Reilly poses as a no-spin zone. He says he's on your side; he says he's an Independent. So it would be a big story if he signed up with the Bush campaign, no question.
HESS: Yeah, sure. I think the -- O'Reilly is one of these commentators. He gets paid a lot of money to have a point of view; people who like it listen to it and it's very clear-cut. I don't think there's any distinction.