I just heard the most remarkable bullshit on O'Reilly
[Video now available here, and a The Note post O'Reilly got excited about.], which is saying something when it involves O'Reilly and the Note's Mark Halperin, ABC's political director. Halperin told O'Reilly that the Right was correct in distrusting the Liberal Media who conspire for ways to make Republicans look bad. Halperin, one of the leading GOP bootlickers in all of the Media has the gall to say that. And of course O'Reilly ate it up. O'Reilly was shocked that someone theoretically sane agreed with his insane conspiracy theory. O`Reilly said, roughly, "So you're saying the liberal Media, like ABC, CBS and the New York Times all work to denigrate Republicans?" And Halperin answers roughly, `we've documented it in our book and we the Media have to work hard these two weeks to regain the trust of conservatives.' Understand what he is saying. The Right will be pleased with ABC's coverage. Which means Dems will be screwed. Unfreakingbelievable.
More on the flip.
But what is most amazing is the admission
Bob Somerby dug up in the very same book that in fact the Media was patently unfair to Al Gore in 2000.
From the Howler:
Deep inside their important but deeply flawed book, John Harris and Mark Halperin tell an astonishing story about the most important political event of the past twenty years. How did George W. Bush reach the White House? In the following passage, Harris and Halperin refer to the "Gang of 500"--roughly speaking, to "the group of columnists, consultants, reporters and staff hands" (page 24) who constitute Insider Washington:
HARRIS/HALPERIN (page 129): A number of members of the Gang of 500 are convinced that the main reason George W. Bush won the White House and Al Gore lost was that Gore's regular press pack included the trio of Katherine "Kit" Seelye (of the New York Times), Ceci Connolly (of the Washington Post), and Sandra Sobieraj (of the Associated Press).
Simply put, that's an astonishing statement--but it appears as a minor aside, buried deep inside a very long book. In this passage, Harris and Halperin--major press corps insiders themselves--say that some of their well-placed colleagues believe that George Bush reached the White House because of the work of just three Gore reporters! Harris and Halperin have dropped a bomb here. And as they do so, they pretend they have not.
. . . Harris and Halperin are discussing the three most important Gore reporters of Campaign 2000--and here's the paragraph which immediately precedes the one we have just presented:
HARRIS/HALPERIN (page 129): No one who kept a close eye on the media coverage of the 2000 campaign would deny that the press corps assigned to Gore was more aggressive and more hostile toward the candidate than those assigned to Bush ...This discrepancy made Old Media reporters much more likely to buy into political party press releases, late-night comic jokes, and the general story line that mirrored the Bush campaign's crafted version of Gore.
A number of members of the Gang of 500 are convinced that the main reason George W. Bush won the White House and Al Gore lost was that Gore's regular press pack included the trio of Katherine "Kit" Seelye (of the New York Times), Ceci Connolly (of the Washington Post), and Sandra Sobieraj (of the Associated Press).
. . . As we noted in a post last week, they go on to say that the entire press corps behaved in this startling fashion:
HARRIS/HALPERIN (page 129): And it was not just those three tone-setters who latched onto a negative image of Gore. Nearly every newspaper and television network in the country did stories at some point during the campaign raising the question of whether the vice president was a big liar or merely a small one. As Rolling Stone pointed out long after the election, "Journalists just refused to drop unflattering Gore stories, no matter what the facts revealed."
So who in God's name should be suspicious of the Media? And in light of Halperin's promise to be "fair" to Republicans, I guarantee you ABC will be screwing Democrats for the next two weeks. It is an outrage. Halperin should be disqualified from reporting on the election. He admits he will not report fairly, instead he will be trying to placate the Right. He says so himself.