O'Reilly vs Olbermann. The feud heats up

Okay, so this feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann has now exploded all over the internet. Both TV Newser and Inside Cable News are all over this story, and especially the article written by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.  Newsbusters has the story as well, Murdoch's US newspaper, The New York Post has also weighed in and not surprisingly, Olbermann Watch has spun the story so hard, that they think they're about to acheive orbit!

Unfortunately, none of them have hit the target!  Most of them get close, but like a bad marksman, they cannot hit the bullseye!   They haven't realised what has really been going on.  Allow the TruthSeeker to explain.

Bill O'Reilly has made a career at Fox News Channel out of presenting himself as part of some no-spin zone.  In reality, he's spinning the items in his show to favour right wing thinking, not necessarily the Republicans, but right wing thinking in general.

Like most people who have a conservative/right wing mindset, Bill O'Reilly is incapable of admitting he ever makes a mistake.  It is part of the conservative/right wing mindset to blame someone else for their error, even when it is their fault exclusively, they will blame someone else, just because they refuse to ever blame themselves.

You will occasionally see or hear an apology from some conservatives for some of the really dumb things they have done, but not every time, and in all the times I have watched Bill O'Reilly's programme, I don't think I've ever seen him issue an apology on his show.

Keith Olbermann on the other hand, when he has made a mistake on air, has apologised on air.  In fact, he's even awarded himself some bronze medals in his "Worst Person In The World" segment for doing so.  The Bill O'Reilly equivalent would be to see Bill call himself a pinhead in his "Pinheads and Patriots" segment, for something like the "Malmedy" incident when he got the details mixed up twice!  But there was no apology then, just an attempt at a get out of jail free card!  And Bill O'Reilly has never called himself a pinhead.

Now, I said most of them got close, but kept missing the reality.  Here's why.

The New York Post rightly pointed out that...

"...Olbermann walked out of MSNBC years ago in a huff after also blowing up at ESPN, so TV insiders are curious if this recent behavior is a sign that history will repeat itself."

But, they also say that...

"...Olbermann recently encouraged management to oust the cable channel's lone conservative, Tucker Carlson, and it's also no secret among producers that Olbermann refuses to introduce Dan Abrams' show, which follows his own."

Those statements cannot be backed up by any independent source.  Also, please note, that the New York Post belongs to the same News Corporation that Fox News Channel belongs to, so if there was a definite dirty tricks campaign eminating from Fox, the New York Post would be an obvious outlet.

Now to Inside Cable News, which is one of my favourite blogs, and Spud, who runs that has a lot of respect from me, for going against the corporate spin that eminates out from the corporate news operations in New York and DC.  But this time, he's missed the mark.  His commentary on the Washington Post story began thusly:

"...The problem for NBC is that Bill O’Reilly has become as adept and skilled at distorting and misrepresenting NBC and GE as Keith Olbermann is at distorting and misrepresenting O’Reilly and Fox. It was all fine and dandy for NBC when it was just O’Reilly and anything Murdoch getting beat up. But now that it’s a two way street, NBC is whining."

This sounds like something out of an O'Reilly Talking Points Memo, or something Fox News' anti-Keith Olbermann specialist John Gibson might come up with.   Spud fails to mention that Bill O'Reilly has always been adept and skilled at distorting and misrepresenting people, organisations and companies he didn't like.  But from what I have seen of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith hasn't misrepresented anything Bill O'Reilly has said.  In fact, he's been very specific with quotes from the mouth of Bill O'Reilly himself.  Bill O riles against what he sees as "hate speech from the left", but rarely ever touches on the mass of right wing hate speech that comes out from people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and many other right wing talk show hosts and columnists continue to spout on an almost daily basis.

And by the way, Keith Olbermann is the only so-called "left wing loon" that Bill O'Reilly never has mentioned by name, on air.  Not once.  Yet he's happy to name the likes of Rosie O'Donnell, Al Franken and many others.  Instead of directly challenging his opponent, he shoots all around him, at every other target possible closely associated with Keith Olbermann, hoping that one of those damages Olbermann too, but as before, like a bad marksman, he keeps missing the target.  He needs to refocus on dealing with Keith more directly, then he'll look like less of a coward.

Basically, Bill O'Reilly can stop this feud immediately, by stopping lying to his viewers.  He can stop the distorting, the misrepresenting, and start dealing in facts and truth, not lies and spin.  His so-called "No Spin Zone" is spinning so fast, the centrifugal force inside it must be close to fatal levels!!!

But as I pointed out earlier, those of a right wing mindset, will never admit they've made a mistake, so Bill O'Reilly and his so called "No Spin Zone" will end up spinning so fast that it will end up destroying The O'Reilly Factor and Fox News with it.

O'Reilly's Factor Fix-Up against GE.

Bill O'Reilly is known for sending out Jesse Waters, his little "producer" to events where the presence of Bill O himself would bring up red flags.  So, O'Reilly sent the producer to cover GE's shareholder meeting.

It was not hard to find shareholders at the meeting who disapprove of GE conducting any business in Iran, although GE has not done business directly with the country's rulers.  GE's customers have been European oil and gas companies with operations in Iran.

Also at that meeting, an investor in GE, Dr Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund (US ticker symbol FEAOX) confronted GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt about doing business in Iran.  Please note, you only heard the confrontation on O'Reilly's show, you couldn't see it, because, just as at so many other shareholder meetings, no recording devices are allowed, so Fox News broke that rule.

But The Factor didn't tell you everything about Dr Tom Borelli, who also was O'Reilly's guest on the segment.  From doing a little research, it turns out that Dr Tom Borelli has some very interesting history.  Back in 1990, he was Director of Corporate Scientific Affairs at Philip Morris, the tobacco company.  He was amongst the group of people who were constantly trying to tell us that smoking wasn't bad for us, and there was no danger from second hand smoke. 

Tom Borelli also writes for some conservative political websites, such as TownHall.com and Human Events.  In other words, Dr Tom Borelli is a political animal with more than a little interest in doing business with Fox News and Bill O'Reilly against GE.

The segment is embedded below.

 

Right Wing Media heading for the asylum!

Is it just me or is the right wing media currently collectively heading off the cliff like a bunch of lemmings?

We all know that Fox News Radio's John Gibson (and that's his only gig currently, because his Fox News Channel programme, The Big Story, has been sidelined due to continuing election coverage) has a bias against Keith Olbermann, but I notice just recently, via the OlbermannWatch YouTube channel, a minor league talk show host in the states called Mark Levin get in on the act recently, refering to MSNBC as "MS-LSD".

LSD, as in the drug, you know, the one that causes 'trips' as they're known. Mark Levin is suggesting that the whole MSNBC network is basically on one big hallucenagenic trip!

All the common Republican talking points also came out, such as NBC being in the pay of the Democrats, such as Media Matters being a George Soros front group, and that Olbermann gets his talking points from the Daily Kos blog. It's like they hope we haven't noticed that a lot of their talking points come direct from the Republican party, and the Bush Whitehouse. It's been widely reported that Conservative talk radio hosts have regularly been invited up to the Whitehouse for briefings during this Bush presidency, a presidency that has made a joke out of the United States of America.

This kind of partisan hackery and propoganda has got to STOP! It does nothing for the political process, and brings an already disreputable American media only further into disrepute and shame. Is it any wonder that more and more Americans are choosing to look outside their borders for reputable news sources. The American media had better get its act together and realise we live in a global village, and the kind of partisan propoganda that is spewed by the American media is going to only further drive people away from American media to overseas media. It's time they listened and learned. I won't hold my breath waiting...

Bill O'Reilly tries to link Phil Donahue to Barack Obama, via George Soros and MoveOn.org!

It's a long title for a post, but the latest column from Fox News Channel's bloviator-in-chief Bill O'Reilly is perfectly summed up by that title.

Bill O'Reilly is basically criticising Phil Donahue for being the producer and director of a film currently on limited release in the US, called "Body Of War". He remembers facing off against Phil on ABC News Good Morning America back in late 2001.

"...Back then, Donahue was routed by public opinion and retreated to his compound in Connecticut to lick his wounds. But after a period of quiet, the left-wing zealot is re-energized by the mismanaged Iraq war. To paraphrase Austin Powers: Phil has his mojo back.

Now, what Phil Donahue thinks is not important in the grand scheme, but what Barack Obama thinks is, and there may be some intersection here..."

Now those paragraphs above are the first set of key paragraphs in his column. He tries to link Phil Donahue to Barack Obama, and a rather shabby attempt it is too.

But wait, the shabbyness doesn't end there...

"...Recently, a far-left radio guy called John McCain a "warmonger" at a Democratic event in North Dakota. The senator was on the scene, but did not make a comment.

Since Senator McCain immediately chastised a far-right talk show host who insulted Obama at a McCain event, some believe Obama might have been smart to return the favor.

But, again, he did not..."

Perhaps he felt that to chastise the 'far-left radio guy' would have been giving him more creedence than he deserved. Without hearing it first hand, it's difficult to know or even guess what would have been going through Obama's head at that time. Never stops a conservative from trying though!

But even now, he is not done, cos then he tries to go even further and link both Donahue and Obama to George Soros and MoveOn.org, who O'Reilly claims are financially linked.

"...I believe the reason Senator Obama avoids criticizing the far-left is because he needs it. Phil Donahue's strongest ally in denouncing the U.S. action in Afghanistan was MoveOn.org, the organization that is now helping Barack Obama raise records amounts of campaign money.

MoveOn, of course, has received millions from far-left billionaire George Soros, who is a huge supporter of a "one world" foreign policy that demands the USA seek world approval before any aggressive action against another country.

It would be unfair to link Barack Obama's foreign policy vision to that of Donahue and Soros because we simply don't know what the Senator's overall world view is..."

It has been said many times before but I'll say it again. George Soros does not directly fund MoveOn.org. Bill O, your own graphic which you put up on the Factor some time ago, to try and claim that he did proved conclusively that he did not directly fund MoveOn.org. Yet you continue to vent this spiel as though it is fact. The TruthSeeker has caught you out!

Note that last quoted paragraph there. The whole of the article before then is spent linking Obama with Donahue, Soros and MoveOn.org, then says it would be unfair to do so. Pure hypocritical, fraudulent, schmuck!

The Daily Mail and BBC bashing.

Every independent media commentator knows that the Daily Mail is a conservative newspaper with a well established line in BBC bashing. I have previously documented myself just how desperate the Daily Mail is to discredit the BBC at EVERY opportunity. But this is scraping through the bottom of the barrell, and trying to dig through the mud and slurry beneath it.

Someone at the Daily Mail noticed that several BBC correspondents are wearing jackets from The North Face. Apparently, the brand has been spotted at the World Economic Forum as sported by Economics Editor Evan Davis and Breakfast's Business guru Declan Curry, as well as at several other locations.

Here's what the TruthSeeker says. Who gives a damn what they are wearing! This has as much to do with the news as Emily Maitliss showing "too much leg", and Katie Derham wearing a leather jacket, in other words, a whole load of NOTHING! What they wear has nothing, I repeat, N, O, T, H, I, N, G, nothing to do with the content of the newscast or report. The Daily Mail proves once again that their super-silly superficialness has blinded them to reality, and Paul Dacre, who is the Editor over there should take a long hard look, and remember to AVOID subjects like this one in his newspaper. He and his newspaper should be reporting the news, you know, like the political situation in Pakistan, or the US presidential election, not reducing his paper to reporting banal, uninteresting, boring, superficial material like this, which doesn't even deserve to be called a news story.

When I was learning journalism, I learned that for a story to be regarded as NEWS, it had to be important; have a material impact on the audience in terms of their earnings or spending power or similar, provoke an emotional reaction. This did none of those in regards to the story. It provoked me into another rant at ANOTHER newspaper for reporting a non-news story. I want to read news, not trivia, in a newspaper. The trouble is the tabloids and the celebrity magazines all seem to think that news is reporting the most insignificant detail you can find about an origanisation or celebrity, and then blow it up into a massive headline on the front page, out of all proportion. I think it's time some egos in the newspaper industry woke up to the reality of the world around us like the rest of us do, rather than staying cosied-up in their sanitized, politicised comfort zones.