On the January 31 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly accused CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour of harboring a “rooting interest” in the Iraq war being a disaster. Although Amanpour did say that she thought the Iraq war “has basically turned out to be a disaster” and was a “terrible situation,” she said nothing to support O'Reilly's assertion that she desires the war to turn out badly.

Amanpour made her comment during the January 30 edition of CNN's Larry King Live while discussing how the injuries sustained by ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt in a January 29 bombing in Iraq impacted journalists' attempts to be objective while reporting on the Iraq war:

AMANPOUR: And I cannot tell you how awful I feel for Bob and Doug and for their families, their wives, their children who have to put up with them going away and waiting for them just like our families do when we come back. But, as [former CNN correspondent] Peter Arnett said and I think that the others have said, that, number one, it's our responsibility. Number two, if we don't do it, who does it? We have had so -- we have to have an independent eye on these conflicts. The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster and journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that and so have many, many other people who have been there. And I think that's terribly, terribly difficult for us and unfortunately, for some reason which I can't fathom, the kind of awful thing that's going on there now on a daily basis has almost become humdrum. So, when something happens to people that we identify, like Bob and like Doug, we wake up again and realize that, no, this is not acceptable what's going on there and it's a terrible situation.

From a discussion with University of North Carolina associate professor Napoleon Byars on the January 31 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: No, I know that. But look, you have to look at it, professor -- and I'm sure you know this because you do this every day -- in the sense of how she's now perceived in her coverage on CNN. I mean, she's declared herself to say it's a disaster. So, you can draw by that that she has a rooting interest in it being thus.