The heat is being turned up on pathological liar Bill O’Reilly and his enablers at Fox News. The numerous accounts of his deliberately falsifying his resume with self-aggrandizing tales of journalistic heroism continue to be the source of deserved criticism and ridicule. The latest dishonorable mention for O’Reilly comes from comedian Bill Maher, who was characteristically candid on his HBO program last night (video below).
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Maher was puzzled about the lack of attention that O’Reilly has received from much of the press for his obvious embellishments and outright lies about his experiences as a reporter. So Maher let O’Reilly’s own words bury him by merely reading the things that O’Reilly said that have been proven to be false.
“These are out-and-out lies. Now, I understand why Fox News backs him because they’re not really a news service. They’re like, ‘You expect the truth? That’s not what we do here.’ But why isn’t the mainstream media going after him with the same ferocity – the supposedly ‘liberal media’ – as they did to Brian Williams?”
Good question. At this point the evidence of O’Reilly’s dishonesty is overwhelming. His resorting to overt threats aimed at reporters covering the story is typical of his bullying tactics. His cowardly refusal to address the substance of the allegations proves that he has no defense other than to shout and stamp his feet and brag about his ratings.
Indeed, O’Reilly’s ratings are quite good for a cable news program. But that’s nothing to brag about when your product is unmitigated bullcrap. By failing to hold O’Reilly accountable, Fox News is embracing and condoning his moral and professional transgressions and conceding that their network proudly employs liars and engages in unabashed deception. It is an insult to their viewers who they presume will accept any heaping portion of steaming shitola that’s put in front of them. Well, on that note Fox may be right. After all, their viewers have been eating up O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin and Donald Trump for years.
The mindset of Fox was perfectly framed by Maher’s conservative panelist, Genevieve Wood of the ultra-rightist Heritage Foundation. She excused Fox’s failure to sanction O’Reilly because, unlike Williams who acknowledged and apologized for his embellishments, O’Reilly stubbornly denies that he misrepresented anything in his past, the facts notwithstanding. In a state of severe delusional panic, Wood said…
“Fox is going to defend him as long as he’s saying ‘I did what I said I did,’ and nobody else is really able to challenge it.”
Huh? Everybody else is able to challenge it. And it isn’t just people who have different recollections of the distant past. There are contemporaneous videos and tape recordings of O’Reilly himself that contradict his present day mythologies about his grand adventures. But Wood’s justification neatly fits the Fox view of news. They regard it as a mutable commodity that can be molded to whatever serves their agenda. And Fox will indeed continue to defend O’Reilly because he is doing what they pay him to do – which is to lie.
Consequently, it is time that the rest of the media acknowledge that Fox is not in any way, shape, or form a news enterprise. They are purveyors of propaganda and disseminaters of deception. They have no journalistic principles or respect for their audience. They are comfortable with liars like O’Reilly because lying doesn’t violate their standards, it upholds them. And for those who say that O’Reilly’s malfeasance is different than Williams’ because O’Reilly is an opinion commentator and not a journalist, they need to remember that he was, in fact, a journalist when he did the things about which he is lying today. Also, when discussing factual events there is no exemption from truth-telling for opinion commentators.
Finally, for those who say that catching Fox News lying isn’t newsworthy because everyone knows they do it, that is a cop-out. It remains the obligation of legitimate news operations to report the sort of serious departures from the truth that O’Reilly has demonstrated. And any news organization that condones such dishonesty must not be treated as a credible news source. The media cannot continue to pretend that Fox has anything to do with news.
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Mr O’Reilly does attract a huge number of viewers for a basic cable commenter. Who knew there were that many aging conspiracy theorists still alive?
“Finally, for those who say that catching Fox News lying isn’t newsworthy because everyone knows they do it, that is a cop-out. ”
I agree, however, apparently everyone doesn’t know it or has some outlandish justification for why they would give fox a pass. We’ve seen a comment or two on this site demonstrating just this.
But eventually those viewers who still have some modicum of common sense will need to come to grips with the idea that the media in this country is self serving and needs to keep their viewers pliable to keep them coming back, especially fox. If fox is continually identified with lying and liars, some may eventually be forced to think for themselves.
From the Falklands to the Battle of Hastings, BOR’s career I Am Bill O’Reilly And I Heard Shots Fired
For those who asked, here is a Handy Collection Of O’Reilly’s Lies – So Far.
He was also there when they freed the slaves.
Thing is, FNC could boot O’Reilly and other liars today, demand honesty and accuracy from their personnel, and become the news channel they pretend to be, and viewers will still believe all the lies that have been currently spewed.
And they’d just replace them with new and better liars.
Bill Maher has used the c-word and the t-word to describe conservative women. He has also “joked” about Glenn Beck being shot dead by police, “joked” about Elisabeth Hasselback being gang-raped by an Egyptian mob, and he was not joking when he yammered about much better off the world would have been if Vice President Cheney had assassinated back in 2006. Bill Maher spews hate, and nothing but hate. He is a liar, a hatemonger and a filth-spewer. This is without question. Since you hold him up as some great truth-teller, you have once again exposed your hate and hypocrisy for all the world to see.
You’re welcome.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! You make him sound like Bill O’Reilly!
Actually, he said nothing about gang-rape by an Egyptian mob. Not that facts bother your sort.
He said that the USA should have traded Elizabeth Hasselback for Lara Logan, who was gang-raped by the mob.
And he was right.
That is a disgusting, wicked and evil comment. Let’s see if Mark bothers to delete that pile of sewage you just excreted onto this site.