Since the November 2 presidential election, FOX News Channel host and radio host Bill O'Reilly has claimed three times that CNN's Inside Politics host Judy Woodruff “looked like she was going to cry” when Florida was called for President George W. Bush. Yet Media Matters for America viewed the CNN video clip in question; Woodruff does not, in fact, look “like she was going to cry.”

On the November 4 edition of FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, when O'Reilly said it was “egregious” that Woodruff was on the verge of tears, Bernard Goldberg, author of the book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Regnery, 2001), replied, “There was a suicide watch out on her, I understand.”

O'Reilly made the same false claim on November 3, both on The O'Reilly Factor and on his nationally syndicated radio show, The Radio Factor.

During CNN's special election night coverage, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer announced that Florida's electoral votes went to Bush. Woodruff then reported further detail on the Florida vote count:

WOODRUFF: Well, you can't say we weren't cautious, Wolf, because we waited until now 98 percent of the vote is in and counted in Florida. Ninety-four percent of the precincts, I'm told, 98 percent of the vote. There is a spread of, I'm told -- it's 51.9 percent for George W. Bush, the president, Bush, to 47.3 for [Senator] John Kerry.

The bottom line is, Wolf, that the possibility of an error is now so small, the number of ballots that are out, 500,000. In order for John Kerry to overtake President Bush, he would have to win something like 80 percent of those outstanding ballots, and they don't believe that's statistically possible. There clearly are some ballots still out, but they don't think it can change the results there.

From the November 3 edition of FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Over at CNN, Judy Woodruff looked like she was going to cry when Florida announced it was for Bush. I swear. Remember, I said [NPR senior correspondent and FOX News Channel contributor] Juan Williams was going to cry on Ohio. Judy -- I thought Judy was going to break down.

From the November 3 broadcast of the nationally syndicated Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: And, I was watching CNN when the call from Florida came in -- I thought Judy Woodruff was gonna cry. She looked like she was gonna break down and cry! On the air! Because -- if she had followed The Factor she woulda known that Florida was gonna go for Bush and not be so upset.

From the November 4 edition of The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: I saw two egregious things. Judy Woodruff of CNN almost cried when Florida, your state, was called for Bush. Really, she was so shaken.

GOLDBERG: There was a suicide watch out on her, I understand.