The first part of Bill O’Reilly interview with Jon Stewart aired on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor tonight, and when the topic to turned to Fox News’ balance Stewart said, “I think Fox in and of yourselves say that you are not a news organization all day…” Stewart consistently turned the tables on O’Reilly.
Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:
Stewart said, “Here’s what I believe Fox News is the most passionate and sells the clearest narrative of any news organization, if that’s, are you still referring to it in that manner? Later he continued, “I think Fox in and of yourselves say that you are not a news organization all day. Isn’t now, you’re news from 9-11 then you are opinion, then you’re opinion, then you’re news again from 1-2:30, except on the Jewish holidays then you’re not, and then on alternate parking days you’re news, then on Christmas you’re not.”
O’Reilly compared Fox News to a newspaper, but Stewart rebutted, “First of all, newspapers are a passive piece of paper that you go to and you know where the opinion is. Television doesn’t function that way, and you know it. Stewart pointed out that Fox News doesn’t clearly label their opinions. Stewart asked Bill-O if he truly believed that Fox News is fair and balanced, and O’Reilly said that the hard news division is.
Stewart was running circles around O’Reilly, who was forced to mouth the same old Fox News talking points. Of course, FNC doesn’t clearly label their news and opinion, because the two intermix on a daily basis. It’s impossible to believe that a network that has an overarching ideology is able to run an objective news division. This argument does not hold water.
As far as the separation of news and opinion is concerned, O’Reilly, Beck, and Hannity air on a network that it calls itself Fox News. The network does not call these shows their opinion bloc. They make no effort to differentiate. In fact, they promote the opinion shows as news. Stewart delivered the criticism that O’Reilly had no counter for.
Welcome to the site:-)
The errors you are referencing originated in the transcript, which wasn’t written here, if you notice the link.
Thanks for the feedback; we certainly wouldn’t want to be mistaken for “morans” who can’t spell “oligarcy”.
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MSNBC and CNN label their opinion shows as such so much better and more often.
Argument is moronic.
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I appreciate that you made a post about Stewarts appearance on the O’Reilly Factor. This is my first time on this site, but please, my head was aching as I was reading the article. I hope the liberal writers you’re hiring can run a spell and grammar check before posting!
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I appreciate that you made a post about Stewarts appearance on the O’Reilly Factor. This is my first time on this site, but please, my head was aching as I was reading the comment from Anonymous. He sounds so incredibly conservative and pompous that he should go in and have his underwear loosened from about his head. I love how Stewart presents those dreaded ‘facts’ to O’Reilly, but it’s as futile as bringing penicillin to the dead.
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I know this article and Stewart won’t help the extreme right hard core members, but hopefully some of the American public that has a little intelligence left after all this political garbage can see clearly enough to stop the madness before the fringe becomes the majority and America loses it’s principles of genuine democracy.
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Roger Ailes and producers of Fox news are creating a major disservice to America. It is frightening to see the mind control that is playing on the American public who trusted the mass stream media and it’s reporting of the truth. I switched to Fox news when President Obama did the Q and A with the GOP caucus and when he addressed the town hall meeting in New Hampshire just to see how it would be covered.
Because Obama was challenging all the GOP’s misleading information and obvious blocks to any progress for the country by the GOP working with the President, Fox, versus CNN and MSNBC, shifted from the program as soon as the President started declaring the facts.
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News is news. If from Fox, AP, CNN, NBC, CBS, or even NPR news is news. Opinion is opinion from the same. Problem is that news divisions of all but Fox are dominated by leftist and there are a few leftist even at Fox. If you are on the left the “opinion” that often is peppered into all news reporting and certainly in all editorializing sounds very strange if coming from the center or from the right. Get accustomed to it, because it is here to stay. Fox is successful because about half the country identifies with a right wing world view. We are certainly “Morons” if we can’t distinguish “News” from “Opinion” from the Right or the Left.
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The problem with your comment is that many people (I even have some in my family) believe that Fox news is all news all the time. They hear the same things repeted over and over again (and let’s face it Fox news in its news places opinion as well) they begin to believe it as fact even if is an opinion.
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The Network is not named “Fox News occasionally, and Opinions the rest of the time (which is most of the time)”. It makes no mention in their motto of how biased, how incomplete and frequently how inaccurate it is in the course of promoting their extremely biased opinions.
A perfect example would be Fox News cutting away from the coverage of President Obama speaking to the Republicans the last Friday in January, rather than allow the President addressing and refuting the Republicans to be viewed by their particular very narrow segment of followers.
Anone else might consider them to be censoring the news, by which I mean not government intervention but a corporation limiting information in a calculated way that deceives and misleads and misinforms. THAT is not news coverage, it is the opposite.
Not that Ailes would ever admit to it.
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