Last night (O'Reilly Factor, 1/10/11), Bill O'Reillytalking to Brit Hume:

O'REILLY: We have a network, an entire network that's built around attacking Fox News and right-wing people. That's all they do at MSNBC. They have nothing else.

HUME: How's that working out for them?

O'REILLY: It's not working out for them. But it does mean that I have to have 24-hour security. That I have to worry about my children being assaulted. OK? That's what it means. You talking about nuts? These people ignite those nuts all day long.

I don't see the equivalency of talk radio. I said that there is some of that and there is. Some of those right-wing people go way overboard and they shouldn't. But I don't see the equivalent of it.

It goes without saying that O'Reilly's reading of other media is, shall we say, selective. Here' s the New York Times editorial yesterday:

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.

The version as edited by O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 1/10/11):

So let's begin with the New York Times. In an editorial today, that far-left newspaper said, quote, "It is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced a vast majority of these death threats. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants or welfare recipients or bureaucrats," unquote.

That is flat out reprehensible and every American should condemn that New York Times editorial. Republicans had nothing to do with these murders in Arizona.

Which is, you know, exactly what the paper said--in the part just before O'Reilly started reading.

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.

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard goes deep into the belly of the beast (3/21/09) with a look at some revealing comments from Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume upon receiving the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence: "Thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center...for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years." Hume's subsequent admission that "it was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it" makes Howard think

it sounds like the MRC was Fox News' wire service. They saved Fox the trouble of having to go out and make up the news by themselves.... But this isn't the first time a Foxian has revealed that they are in the employ of rightist ideologues:

• Fox anchor Jon Scott was caught reading directly from a Republican press release as though it were news.
• Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape public opinion on the war in Iraq.
• Murdoch also boasted that his Fox Business Network would be a more “business-friendly” network....
• In a revealing bit of staff development, George Bush hired Fox anchor Tony Snow to be his press secretary.

And, as a bonus bit "just added" by The Most Biased Name in News, Howard tells us that on March 23, "in an interview with NPR, Fox News VP Bill Shine blurted out that Fox is the 'voice of opposition.'"