Sarah Palin's highly anticipated visit to Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor saw the famously tough-as-nails host ask the tough questions of the right-wing leader:

O'REILLY: OK. The latest poll has you with a 23 percent favorable, 37 percent don't know. You do the math, OK. And you're up at 60 percent of people who could like you. You are the biggest threat because you are a star, media star, whereas you're the only Republican. There aren't any other Republicans who are media stars but you. Now, that's why they're attacking you so vehemently. Do you know that?

In other words, "You could be really popular some day, and don't know you know how that makes liberals crazy?"

Nothing but the tough questions from that guy.

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, commenting on a tax increase in California:

That could happen on the federal level. Already Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That's not capitalism. That's Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn.

Setting aside the truth of the charge against Pelosi, Fidel Castro must have been the president of the United States in 1982-86, when the top rate was 50 percent. Or maybe all of the 1970s, when it was 70 percent. Or from 1950-63, when it was 91 percent.

O'Reilly interviewing John Stossel, who left ABC for Fox Business Network (11/3/09):

O'REILLY: You committed the cardinal sin of all time. You left a liberal network, and you went to a traditional right-leaning network. So you're never, ever going to be liked again by anyone. Does that make you sad?

STOSSEL: Well, I live with these people. They all live in my neighborhood. So that makes me sad.

O'REILLY: Move out to Long Island where I live, because I live with the folks.

STOSSEL: I like taking the subway to work.

O'REILLY: You're a pansy. Come out to Long Island. All right?

For anyone keeping score, you can find aerial maps of what is purportedly O'Reilly's humble Long Island home. Man of the people, indeed.

When Fox News Channel was developing Sean Hannity's TV show, it was known as Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined. That liberal turned out to be Alan Colmes, who would eventually leave the gig after doing his part by playing the Washington Generals to Hannity's Harlem Globetrotters. It hardly mattered who sat in the "left" chair--they were there to get roughed up by the home team.

Until recently, professor Jane Hall was a regular guest on the O'Reilly Factor, debating conservative Bernie Goldberg. She's left Fox, and as she explained to CNN's Howard Kurtz (10/25/09), she never considered herself a liberal anyway:

KURTZ: When you appeared regularly on O'Reilly, were you there as a token from the dreaded MSM?

HALL: Well, I was there as a defender of the MSM. And you wouldn't believe how many famous journalists I talked to, who said better you than me. Let me tell you my side of the story. They didn't want to come on. It is hard to do, because it was like, when did you quit beating your wife? That was usually the question. But I felt it was worth doing.

KURTZ: Do you consider yourself a liberal?

HALL: No.

KURTZ: You were paired with Bernie Goldberg, the conservative point of view, who wrote a book about the media's slobbering love affair with Barack Obama?

HALL: Right.

KURTZ: So was that a fair pairing, to have someone who has that point of view, and you? You consider yourself a journalist.

HALL: I consider myself a journalist. I'm now able to say opinions because I'm a professor. I consider myself a moderate. In that universe, I was probably considered a wacky professor by O'Reilly. He would sort of pat me on the head and say, now, Jane, I know you liberals feel this way. And I'd say, I'm not really a liberal. So, yes, there's not necessarily a left/right comparison on there.

In a 2001 study, FAIR found that in its regular one-on-one interviews, Fox News' flagship news show Special Report With Brit Hume favored Republican guests over Democrats by a greater than 8-to-1 ratio. After the FAIR report, Hume told the New York Times (7/2/01) that if the data warranted, he  would rectify the bias: "If it is a reasonable question, and we find that there is some imbalance, then we’ll correct it." A 2002 follow-up study (Extra!, 7-8/02) showed some improvement--a mere 3-to-2 bias in favor of GOP over Democratic guests--but by 2004, FAIR showed, the ratio had crept back up to a 5-to-1 advantage for Republicans.

Last night, in an attempt to rebut White House communications director Anita Dunn's recent claim that Fox News "often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party," Fox News' Bill O’Reilly brought on Brit Hume as an expert on media bias (O'Reilly Factor, 10/12/09).

Hume claimed that Fox doesn’t feature "very many people who are down-the-line advocates for whatever the Republican party is up to," and that "the Republican party takes a fair amount of fairly sharp criticism on Fox News and has for a long time." Hume offered no evidence and ignored the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And, though it is beside the point of whether or not Fox News is an arm of the GOP, Hume wheeled out Fox's old attack on the rest of the corporate media. Citing his pre-Fox career at outlets like ABC News, Hume told O’Reilly: "It wasn't that I couldn't report the news in the way that I saw fit. It was that I often had to argue for doing it a different way than the headlines on the front page of the New York Times seemed to direct the network coverage."

With bias experts like Hume, one might wonder if Fox would feature the Unabomber as an expert on domestic terrorism. Certainly no one can say that Hume didn't get to report the news the way he "saw fit" at Fox.

Michael Moore says he won't appear on Glenn Beck's or Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show to promote his new film Capitalism: A Love Story because there's too much hate speech on those shows. Last night, O'Reilly strengthened Moore's argument in a segment in which he discussed Michael Moore's body language with regular guest Tonya Reimer:

O'REILLY: Right. Would it be wrong if I slapped him?

REIMAN: We'll have to let him judge that.

O'REILLY: You just want....

REIMAN: Not a big fan, are we?

O'REILLY: You know, it's an interesting question. I admire his entrepreneurship. I admire his creativity. But there's just something about him, you know.

Add to this that Glenn Beck once fantasized about killing Moore with his bare hands (not to mention seeing Dennis Kucinich burned alive), and you have a network whose two leading hosts have expressed a desire to physically attack Moore for expressing beliefs with which they disapprove.

Naturally, O'Reilly whined during the same segment that Moore refused to appear on his show:  "I might remind everybody Michael Moore would not come on the program. Even though he's got a dopey belief to publicize, he's too afraid." Maybe with good reason.

Former TV Newser Brian Stelter's article (New York Times, 8/7/09) about MSNBC and Fox News having "resumed their long-running feud this week after the New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other's televised personal attacks" states that "the deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O'Reilly occupy," reporting that "employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members."

While GE's official line is that, "while both companies agreed that the tone should be more civil, no one at GE told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news," Stelter quotes unnamed Fox employees who "said they were told in June and July not to flagrantly criticize General Electric." Stelter gives more room to Fox management denials--"We've never suppressed any stories about NBC or GE"--before getting to "some watchdog groups" pointing out how

the months-long cease-fire challenged the claims that the two media companies did not interfere in their on-air content.

The advocacy group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting asked its supporters on Friday to contact GE, urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.

Jeff Cohen, the founder of the group, said the deal between the two networks’ parent companies was a reason to be wary of corporate-owned TV news.

"It should remind news consumers of who calls the tune and pays the bills--and that TV reporters and even loud-mouthed commentators have corporate bosses whose interests are often not about unbridled journalism," Mr. Cohen said.

Salon editor Joan Walsh weighs in too, about how "it appeared that 'the owners of two large news organizations colluded to make sure their audience got less, not more, information, and to promote their business interests, not the public interest.'"

Read FAIR's new Action Alert: "Did GE Stifle Keith Olbermann?: Fox and MSNBC's Gentlemen's Agreement" (8/7/09).

Using the screenname "roberwter," one resident of the Netherlands has posted (YouTube, 7/27/09) "a video response to a Fox News broadcast about my city, Amsterdam."

The short piece starts with clips of Bill O'Reilly and guests claiming that the Dutch's "experimentation with social tolerance, free love, free drugs, clearly has backfired" and that "Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control. It's anarchy." Then, all under the headline "The Truth About Amsterdam," roberwter provides something Fox's talking heads rarely bring to viewers--simple facts:

Percentage of population that has ever used Cannabis
USA: 40.3 percent
Netherlands: 22.6 percent

Homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants
USA: 5.6
Netherlands: 1.2

Drug-related deaths (e.g. overdose) per million inhabitants
USA 38.0
Netherlands: 2.4

These startling statistics are all backed by something even more rarely found on the Fox channel: verifiable sources--all clearly listed in the video's final credits.

See the "Terror and Ecstasy" sidebar in this article from FAIR's magazine Extra!: "The 'Oh Really?' Factor: Bill O'Reilly Spins Facts and Statistics (5–6/02) by Peter Hart.

Asked by a Canadian viewer, "Has anyone noticed that life expectancy in Canada under our health system is higher than the USA?" Bill O'Reilly (7/27/09) responded: "Well, that's to be expected, Peter, because we have 10 times as many people as you do. That translates to 10 times as many accidents, crimes, down the line."

(h/t Political Animal.)

Gawker blogger The Cajun Boy (6/24/09) is agog at "How Fox News Educates Its Viewers":

Last night Glenn Beck made crude drawings on a chalkboard, and tonight he and Bill O'Reilly used Barbie dolls to explain ACORN.

In the course of explaining how Nancy Pelosi is trying to stop noble Republicans from stopping ACORN from destroying America, Beck reached under the table and pulled out a Barbie kit. Now, we watched this demonstration twice and actually don't get what Beck is trying to convey, so either we're stupider than even the basest Fox viewer or our elitists brains just can't process anything that comes spewing from the mouths of these clowns. Maybe you'll have better luck.

While Beck's demonstration really doesn't make any sense in itself, another reason for the confusion generated is surely that his and O'Reilly's whole take on ACORN is nonsensical in its entirety; see the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "CNN, Fox Hype ACORN Threat" (12/08) by Daniel Ward.

A posting on Timothy Karr's Media Citizen blog (6/17/09) contrasts Crooks & Liars' collection of cable news pundits like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly likening the anti-immigrant Minutemen to a giant, friendly "neighborhood watch" organization with the "chilling double-murder" Minutemen leader Shawna Forde is accused of--describing "the 911 recording of the mother as she witnessed the execution of her 9-year-old daughter and husband. But what's even more infuriating is the way many prominent right-wing media pundits have made this group the darlings of 21st century patriotism":

Frank Rich's most recent New York Times column explains how crimes of this sort are part of a bigger problem egged on by right-wing media:

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O'Reilly's Holocaust analogies to liken Obama's policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to "the final solution" and the quest for "a master race." After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a "lone gunman nutjob." Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that "the pot in America is boiling," as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

We have a real right-wing media accountability moment. Ask yourself how this compares to the mainstream media's current obsession over David Letterman's apology to Palin.

Shouldn't they be more concerned about the harm caused by the shrill pundits of the right?

Seeing "a strange double standard in effect" here, Karr feels the murders to be so "horrible that it's silly to have to compare it to the Letterman/Palin affair. And yet the mainstream media seems to think that one deserves more attention than the other."

Writing at Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) on the murder of "Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife," Gabriel Winant wants us to know that

there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on the Factor on February 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Winant provides some choice quotes amply demonstrating how the Fox star has never been one to let any politically correct fear of hypocrisy stand in the way his righteous bombast: "He's guilty of 'Nazi stuff,' said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005" and "'This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union,' said O'Reilly on November 9, 2006."

For another example of corporate media promotion of attacks on abortion providers, see Extra! Update: Koppel's 'Tough Question': Should Doctors Be Killed (2/94).

Taking note of Bill O'Reilly's "cheerleading the downfall" of newspapers--"he reacted with glee when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was forced to go Web-only. More recently in his column, O'Reilly similarly wisecracked about the New York Times' financial woes"--MediaWeek editor Mike Shields (Editor & Publisher, 5/18/09) challenges "O'Reilly's theory for why these publications are in such deep trouble":

Because they have suddenly shifted radically left in their coverage, and readers are rejecting it. That's why he's happy.

That theory doesn't sync with the thinking of most sensible people in the media who understand the industry is going through massive macro changes, and that many Americans--particularly the young--are permanently changing their reading habits away from newspapers and magazines. Not because of political leanings, mind you, but because the generally free technology of the Web trumps the tradition of carbon-based, physically distributed media every time.

Not to mention the deleterious effects of an ever-greedy Wall Street, phenomenally irresponsible corporate ownership and the press' own efforts to destroy any remaining trust the public may have in their reportage. But to Shields, "there's another interesting aspect to O'Reilly's anti-newspaper diatribe":

During this horrid economic cycle, when millions of Americans are out of jobs and terrified about their future employment prospects, rooting for American businesses to go under seems way out of touch to me, especially for a commentator who's constantly talking about sticking up for regular "folks." It kind of sounds, well, un-American.

Fox host Bill O'Reilly has been passionately defending Bush-era torture for some time. But on April 23 he went further; not only does torture "work," but it is actually broadly popular, too:

According to a new Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, most Americans want tough interrogations of top terror killers. When asked if they would support using torture on Osama bin Laden to get information, 56 percent say they favor doing that, including 42 percent of the Democrats polled. Thirty-nine percent oppose.

So there is little doubt that most Americans believe, in rare cases, tough interrogation is necessary.

A poll that asks whether Americans support torture Osama bin Laden wouldn't seem to tell us much; you might as well ask if people support torturing Satan.

But did Fox really just ask about torturing bin Laden? No. But O'Reilly had to cite that response, because the other responses from the same poll undermine his case. (It would appear to be the only relevant Fox poll on their site; it's a few months old, but the figures are the same as those cited by O'Reilly.) In reality, the Fox poll found the public far more ambivalent about torture than Man-of-the-People Bill O'Reilly:

Opinions on the use of torture are sharply divided. Forty-three percent of Americans favor allowing the CIA to use torture in extreme circumstances to obtain information from prisoners that "might protect the United States from terrorist attacks" and 48 percent oppose it. These results are consistent with findings from polling conducted in 2003 and 2002.

The number in favor of allowing the use of torture increases to 56 percent when the suspect in custody is Osama bin Laden.

So do most Americans favor torture captured "top terror killers?" Apparently not:

17. Do you favor or oppose allowing the CIA, in extreme circumstances, to use enhanced interrogation techniques, even torture, to obtain information from prisoners that might protect the United States from terrorist attacks?

Favor 43%
Oppose 48%
(Depends) 7%
(Don't know) 3%

Demonstrating his trademark ability to move effortlessly from belligerent grandstanding to completely fictive political commentary, Fox star Bill O'Reilly claimed on April 22 that current and former attorney generals "Eric Holder and Janet Reno put the wall up between the FBI and the CIA, which led to the 9/11 attacks." But Media Matters points out (4/23/09):

in fact, the 1995 Justice Department memo and guidelines to which O'Reilly referred only addressed communications among divisions within DOJ, clarifying longtime unwritten restrictions on the sharing of information between the FBI's intelligence arm and DOJ's criminal division. They had no impact on communications between the FBI and the CIA, the Department of Defense, or any other agencies.

And "O'Reilly should know this," considering that, "when he previously adopted the 'wall' falsehood, 9/11 Commission member and former Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) told O'Reilly that the policies in question made 'no limitation on any intelligence agency sharing anything with any other intelligence agency at all.'" But O'Reilly has never been one to let simple reality get in the way of what he chooses to know or not know.