Bill O'Reilly, the man we can't make up
Do you think Bill O'Reilly knows? That
he is an idiot, I mean.
Bill O'Reilly bemoaned the state of journalism on his show Tuesday night, telling his guest that when inaccurate reporting is left unchallenged, it "hurts the country."
"If I made a mistake reporting at WCBS," the Fox host said, "these guys were on me! You had to do it right!"
If he makes a mistake at Fox, on the other hand, we call that a weekday.
O'Reilly said that nowadays, journalists can throw any story out there and subsequently claim "well I didn't report it, [someone else] did!"
Let us recall that Fox News has been instrumental in pushing purely fictitious storylines about "Benghazi!". That Bill O'Reilly both thinks there is a "War on Christmas" and that the Christians were losing it before he stepped in to save the day. That a nonprofit group that sought to register poorer Americans to vote was forced to shutter its doors due to nonsensical conspiracy-riddled theories so thoroughly pounded into the brains of the masses by Fox News "journalists" that to this day very stupid people and congressmen—but I repeat myself—are convinced "ACORN" is still working behind the scenes as secret architects of all the worlds' ills. Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the studies showing viewers of Fox News to be more
misinformed about the issues of the day than are the consumers of any other non-paint-fumes-based news outlet.
And of course Bill O'Reilly has been in hot water himself of late for, to use the journalistic term for it, making shit up. He is only in trouble for it because he was caught lying about stupid, inconsequential, self-promoting things, such as claiming he heard a man's suicide from half a continent away (ol' big ears, they called him) or risked life and limb in Los Angeles to report on the riots (when it appears the extent of his heroic role was facing down a surly resident who didn't take kindly to O'Reilly showing up on his street in a well-polished limo to talk about the depredations of the Poors.) These are stupid, little lies that would never have gone down at WCBS, or on Brian Williams' network, but Mr. O'Reilly and his network both explain that these lies don't count because O'Reilly gets damn good ratings.
Do you think he knows, then? That even though all the "journalism" he personally can see from his window is a shooting gallery of false claims, silly embellishments and conspiracy theories collected from the far fringes of somebody's uncle's e-mail box, the rest of "journalism" still tries to function much like it did in those old, glorious days when WCBS wouldn't let Bill O'Reilly get away with his crap?