During the third quarter, Fox News, which has been routinely walloping its cable-news competition for years, was "the most-watched (network during) primetime across all of cable in more than a decade — even besting USA and ESPN."
So says the Hollywood Reporter, which also gets the award for the most delicious (or is it really the most truthful?) typo of the day:
"Person on the street" interviews are among the more discouraging presentations one can find on news shows these days. All too often, we see low-information people who think they're so smart show us how disturbingly ignorant they actually are.
That they are disheartening doesn't mean they aren't sometimes entertaining. Fox News's Jesse Watters had one such segment on Monday. He interviewed eight women, several of them attractively endowed by their Creator, at the beach in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. Their intellectual prowess, however, was a bit lacking in certain instances, occasionally hilariously so, as Watters launched into questions about "powerful women":
In recent days, the State Department has tried to paint Fox News's Bill O'Reilly as a sexist monster because he characterized Jen Psaki as "out of her depth." O'Reilly's criticism has a great deal to do with how Ms. Psaki often appears to be, well, out of her depth. The other member of the non-dynamic duo then pounced. Marie Harf claimed that O'Reilly used "sexist, personally offensive language that I actually don't think (he) would ever use about a man."
O'Reilly recently defended himself quite well; that video is at the end of this post. On Tuesday, liberal Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers also weighed in. Her USA Today column asserted that O'Reilly "does not discriminate when it comes to expressing tough judgments," and that Harf's sexist accusation was "so irresponsible." Excerpts follow the jump (links are in original; bolds are mine):
MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on The Kelly File on Fox News Channel on Friday night to address how State Department deputy spokesman Marie Harf whacked Fox star Bill O’Reilly on Twitter.
After O’Reilly knocked chief State press aide Jen Psaki as out of her depth of Fox, Harf tweeted that Psaki "explains foreign policy w/ intelligence & class. Too bad we can't say the same about @oreilly factor."
Fox News correspondent James Rosen has been investigated by Obama's Justice Department for being a "co-conspirator" and violator of the Espoinage Act. Attorney general Eric Holder even approved seizing Rosen's private e-mails. Now, Rosen's latest question at a State Department briefing to press aide Jen Psaki prompted her assisant Marie Harf to tweet that Psaki "explains foreign policy w/ intelligence & class. Too bad we can't say the same about @oreilly factor."
Rosen told Bill O'Reilly that "After a little more back and forth, Jen Psaki told me, she sees no utility in placing new labels on the terms of engagement for the United States. If you translate that from diplo- speak, it means no.
This administration does not regard the murders of Mr. Foley and Sotloff as acts of war or more to the point this administration is not placing United States on a war footing with respect to ISIS." O'Reilly said Psaki "looks way out of her depth over there." [See video below.]
On his show Monday night, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared that MSNBC host and Ferguson, Missouri activist Al Sharpton "has become so controversial in America that it's hard to explain how a news agency, NBC, can even have him on the payroll." Mediabuzz host Howard Kurtz agreed, labeling Sharpton's employment with the network "a travesty." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Kurtz pointed to Sharpton "delivering a pretty political speech at the funeral" of Michael Brown and being "the go-to guy for the Obama White House on Ferguson," proclaiming: "It is amazing to me, this just reeks that MSNBC thinks this is acceptable." Moments later, O'Reilly concluded: "I believe that Sharpton almost single-handedly has corrupted NBC News."
On Wednesday evening, Bill O’Reilly returned from vacation to anchor his Fox News Channel (FNC) program live to discuss the situation in Ferguson, Missouri since the death of Michael Brown on August 9. In just over an eight-minute-long “Talking Points” segment, O’Reilly addressed multiple aspects of the story, but specifically slammed MSNBC commentator and activist Al Sharpton as “this charlatan” who “has the nerve to insult the American police community” while only caring “about his own self-aggrandizement.”
After airing a clip of Sharpton speaking at a rally in Ferguson on Sunday in which he indirectly called out law enforcement for “smear[ing]” Brown instead of “the principles of justice and dignity,” O’Reilly grew extremely agitated: “Al Sharpton has the nerve to insult the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us. This charlatan has the gall to do that and NBC News is paying him. My god! Why is that acceptable?” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
During the Wednesday evening episode of The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly slammed conservative activist Jason Mattera's “ambush journalism” of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, calling it “unacceptable” to use “a horrendous act of terror to make a political point.”
After Martha MacCallum, another Fox anchor, appeared in the segment and agreed with O'Reilly. Mattera tweeted: “Rather than invite me to debate the Hillary video, @oreillyfactor brings on someone else to parrot his points. Yeah, 'fair and balanced.'"
At the top of his Wednesday show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly denounced the liberal media for "subverting American democracy." He cited a particularly glaring double standard: "You may remember New Jersey Governor Chris Christie being pounded by the national media for a controversy on the George Washington Bridge....devoting 112 minutes to the situation in the first week....But when the VA scandal story broke, there was no coverage on the nightly network news broadcast for almost two weeks." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Those numbers were calculated by Media Research Center senior news analyst Scott Whitlock in a May 22 Media Reality Check entitled: "In a Month, TV News Gives Less Airtime to VA Scandal than Christie Controversy Received in Four Days."
In an interview with the Fox News host on Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer wondered if "President Bill O'Reilly" would have made the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange with the Taliban. O'Reilly replied: "I would not make the deal....These are not prisoners of war, these Taliban guys, they're war criminals. We ran down last night the atrocities that the Taliban has committed over the past ten years, and it's horrifying." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Lauer followed up: "Do you think the administration either didn't see the reaction coming or misread the reaction?" O'Reilly responded: "It's such a mystery that they wouldn't know. First of all, President Obama knows what Bergdahl did because there's a classified report on the guy....They already know what he did, and it's not good."
On the May 29 edition of the Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor, anchor Bill O’Reilly and colleague Kelly Megyn of FNC’s Kelly File, argued about how conservatives and Republicans should take on the Left’s spin about “income inequality” in American society today.
While Kelly argued that income inequality has objectively gotten worse and is a valid issue that needs to be confronted by policymakers – albeit from a conservative tack by conservatives – O’Reilly claimed that the idea that income inequality is a new and pressing problem is a “myth” as it naturally “exists in every free marketplace” and has merely been “exacerbated” by the success of technology improving everyone’s standard of living. You can read the relevant transcript and watch the exchange by pressing play on the embed below the page break. Click here for MP3 audio.
“I say the poll is ridiculous,” Bernard Goldberg declared on Monday’s O’Reilly Factor in doubting the accuracy of a survey in which 28 percent of journalists self-identified as Democrats and 50 percent claimed to be independents.
Goldberg was willing to buy that a mere seven percent of the press corps are Republican, “but only 28 percent of journalists say they’re Democrats and 50 percent say they’re independents? Impossible.” He predicted that, in reality, if injected with truth serum, “about 85 percent would admit that they voted for Barack Obama twice.”