In addition to being a Fox News purveyor of right wing propaganda, Bill O'Reilly is something of a community activist in that he is able to arouse the passions of his viewership. But rather than being directed in a positive direction, these passions, on occasion, are directed in hateful ways against the targets of Bill's wrath. Last night, Bill focused his wrath against the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In cherry picking one comment from an editorial, he distorted the whole point of the piece which was about public distrust of the media. The comment in question cited Bill O'Reilly and other Fox talkers who, like some on MSNBC, can raise viewer's blood pressures. Bill's rendering of the editorial must have raised the ire, if not the blood pressure, of his viewers because the first call taken, this morning, by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page editor Tony Messenger, was "hey shit head." Looks like when O'Reilly speaks, "the folks" listen!
Mr. Messenger informed me that he routinely gets calls from people whose ire about "liberal bias" suggest that they might be O'Reilly fans and as such, he's gotten rather used to it. He also informed me that the paper's parent company, Lee Enterprises, has been out of bankruptcy since January of this year. O'Reilly actually proved his own point about the inaccuracy of media with his statement that the paper is still in bankruptcy. Whether this was a deliberate lie or inadequate research, O'Reilly's comment was wrong. I was also informed that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is published on a "Joseph Pullitzer" platform which has, as part of its mission statement, being "drastically independent."
The reaction of Bill's "folks," clearly makes the case of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's well written and thoughtful editorial: "Screaming at Each Other Won't Improve Our Democracy." But Bill O'Reilly claims to be a patriotic American. It's a complex world!
BTW the St. Louis Post Dispatch has always been a great newspaper! They have stayed true to Joseph Pulitzer’s memory. Congrats to them.