We all know O'Reilly is a serial liar. Now, he stands accused of being a thief as well. You have to wonder whether Fox News is willing to enforce
any journalistic standards whatsoever:
From an article by Media Columnist Rory O'Connor:
Now it becomes clear that O'Reilly is a thief as well, who stole an exclusive investigative story broken in the pages of the recently launched free daily amNewYork, and presented it as his own. The front page exclusive, which concerned a charity fund organized to reopen Lady Liberty, ran on February 2. It revealed that although the fund raised $40 million annually, officials were using the money for minor maintenance instead of the $7 million in repairs necessary to reopen the monument to the public.
Two weeks later O'Reilly's researcher, Susan Beachy, called amNewYork and asked for a copy of the article. Alex Storozynski, amNewYork editor, followed up with O'Reilly's producer Rich McCue, who told him, "We know you guys broke this story. We haven't seen it anywhere else."
To Storozynski's surprise, however, no mention was made of his newspaper when the story appeared on The O'Reilly Factor. Instead O'Reilly took credit for it himself. As Storozynski later wrote to O'Reilly, "Even the Daily News has given us credit when we break a story, and they are one of our competitors."
If his viewers don't yet know how dishonest O'Reilly is, his staff seems well aware of his ethically challenged behavior. Asked why O'Reilly didn't credit amNewYork, McCue said: "I can't tell him what to do. That's the way he operates."
Fox representatives failed to return several of my phone calls. But when contacted by Lloyd Grove of the Daily News, spokesman Rob Zimmerman dismissed Storozynski's complaints, simply asserting, "There is no plagiarism. Our friends at amNewYork are claiming that they broke this story. But they weren't the first ones to bring it to the public's attention."
Zimmerman must be taking honesty lessons from O'Reilly, because amNewYork undoubtedly had the story first. Instead of acknowledging the truth, however, Zimmerman responded as usual --with an attack -- telling Grove "amNewYork is trying to get publicity off of Bill O'Reilly's coattails."
Whole article:
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert148.shtml
Why this pathetic excuse for a journalist is still allowed on the air is a mystery to me.
Oh no it's not. It's because Fox News isn't a "news" organization at all, anymore than La Cosa Nosta is really in the construction industry.