I think it was a decent thing for him to do after making the wrong statement the day before. Could he have proclaimed it louder and more prominently? Sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually comes up again on his show. But the point is that he did own up to it. That’s a lot more than can be said about Hannity or the others at this point. If I’m going to hold him accountable for bad behavior, it’s only fair to acknowledge when the man does something commendable. This was a direct mea culpa – he didn’t try to blame anyone else or duck. I admire that approach.

I’m with Doors, and I’m doubling down on how I see it- The apology was sincere, even classy, but I’m still thinking that calling it a “mistake” was being far too generous. He had all the time in the world to make sure he was going on the aid with the facts, so rush to judgement, yes. Cherry picking, yes. Mistake? No.

This website only exists because of your “ACCURACY” or lack there of! If Billdo wants to know more about his lack of accuracy and how many things he should be apologizing for, just check out oreilly-sucks.com
PS-Travolta wants his plastic bubble back!

Bildo should issue a general, blanket apology for being a complete horse’s ass. Then he wouldn’t have to issue these rare specific apologies for blatant factual errors.

I agree with you Headly that he should have started his program with the apology and then say he would have more to say about this at the end of the show, but I think he purposely did it that way because he knew many would tune in to see if he would admit his mistake and wanted to boost his ratings by waiting until the end with those who would flip the channel once he did. I’m sure his advertisers were very pleased that he did.

I guess I’m going to be in the minority here, but I thought his apology and admitting his mistake was sincere. We all blow it occasionally and it was refreshing to actually hear him accept responsibility and not blame it on anyone else. He stepped in it and knows it.

I don’t buy the line that people tune in to The Factor for accuracy they tune in to hear their point of view. Bill likes to call himself an independent and no spin, but I believe only Sheppard Smith is entitled to that claim on Fox. I can’t imagine Bill ranting if this were the opposite of not allowing liberals to speak. Bill spoke from his heart of what he wanted to believe.

When I compare this to Rush’s apology to Sandra Fluke which was obviously forced by his bosses who were trying to stop the bleeding of losing sponsors and could care less that Rush was verbally assaulting her for three consecutive days. Rush took in my opinion took the cowards way out of issuing his fake apology on his website on a Saturday afternoon with an apology that was written by public relations officials. He just signed off on what they wrote. To her credit Miss Fluke refused his apology because she knew as we all did that it wasn’t sincere.

Have a safe and relaxing Labor Day weekend everyone.

Sorry, Fox “News” defenders. A few things to consider:

1). Notice how Loofah Lad makes his correction at the end of his show, when viewership has dropped off, as opposed to near the top of the show, where he made the egregious error in the first place? To me that’s not classy at all. He should have opened the show with it.

2). The Falafel King ended his apology with an inside joke that, I’m sure, had his staff chortling behind their hands:

QUOTE: By the way, I’m sorry that I made that mistake. It’s very annoying because I know you guys watch The Factor for accuracy.

Accuracy? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Like when he claimed he single-handedly that he won the phony War on Christmas?

3). The Flying Monkey Squad is still beating me up over a mistake I made on NewsHounds many years ago. In fact, I corrected my mistake only hours later with a post that was longer than the original article. It included a massive mea culpa. Yet, The Flying Monkey Squad will, no doubt, accept that Loofah Lad made a classy apology and will, no doubt, continue to attack me for the mistake but ignore my apology.

Here’s what makes this truly ironic: Through a glitch during NewsHounds’ transfer from the old platform to this platform, my original post and the apology were somehow lost in the cyber-ether (as were a bunch of posts from the same period). This has now become The Flying Monkey Squad’s newest conspiracy theory. A keen observer of those miscreants would note they develop their whacked-out conspiracies by starting with a conclusion and working backward to find any evidence that supports it. Yeah, that’s right, just like every other great Tin Foil Hat Club™ in ’Merka.

The Conspiracy Theory Du Jour: Ellen purposely removed my post so it would go down the Memory Hole. What the Flying Monkey Squad fails to realize is that I am such an egotist about my writing that I want every word I ever posted to remain online in perpetuity. It kills me that a web site I once maintained, long before anyone had ever heard of the word “blog,” is no longer online.

Uh oh! Now I has a sad.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. If you want to read my latest about The Flying Monkey Squad, pop over to my Not Now Silly blog and read The Flying Monkey Squad Strikes Again & Again at http://notnowsilly.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-flying-monkey-squad-strikes-again.html

With all my documents,
Aunty Em Headly

He “simply assumed”? OMG. Well, there’s his first mistake. As someone who has often referred to himself as a journalist, he should never be assuming anything. Geez, how embarrassing for you, BOR, especially when the, ahem, FACTS were just a google search away.

His second mistake is that people watch his show for its accuracy. When talking to BOR fans in my sphere about why they are such dedicated viewers of “The Factor”, not once has any of them said that they watch his show for accuracy/his use of facts. They say that they watch his show for BOR’s own cult of personality/“traditional warrior” persona via his bombastic, opinionated style and his consistent attacks on liberals.

Well, I’ll give him credit for at least realizing that there was no way he was going to be able to spin his way out of this one like he tried to do when he was wrong about NBC supposedly saying “nothing about drone strikes” – despite the fact the NBC broke the story and that most of the NBC personalities had been all over the story well before BOR made his bogus statements.

I guess even stubborn, overly-defensive, egotistical blowhards like BOR sometimes reach a point when they have to admit to themselves that nothing but a flat-out apology will suffice. LOL!

Enter BOR’s all-spin zone – http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-oreilly-defends-nbc-drone-coverage-claim-by-denying-he-said-what-he-said/

“I simply assumed that since all the speakers were liberal Democrats, Republicans were excluded.”
Let me fix this statement for you Bill-
“It fits my anti-Democrat narrative to say that since all the speakers were liberal Democrats, Republicans were excluded.”
You’re welcome.

Sorry. Not accepting his apology. How many other “mistakes” has he made over the years for which he’s NOT apologized? And, as Aria notes, there was NO reason for the “mistake” in the first place. And how long do you think it’s going to be before he ignores his own “tip of the day” and “forget” to “check out the facts before you make a definitive statement?”

Billy looks calm as a cucumber when he apologized on the air. Behind the scenes this short temper man can be heard cursing every name in the book from inside his office. Billy has a very nasty temper. The frauds on the Second Floor have been the receiving end of his fury forever.

NOTE TO BILLY

Who said it was an error to hire you?

Classy, Yes.

Mistake? Not so much.

O’Reilly’s one of the few people on News that actually studied journalism, and all it took anyone who cared was 2 minutes and Google. There were articles debunking this claim before the rally, it was started up that early.

I can’t think of any way he could have gone in not knowing this.

The same goes for Bret Baier- He made a classy retraction, but how could he go in with a claim like that, then claim it was an ‘error?’

Wow! I never thought I’d say this. Well. done. That was classy of him to admit his mistake and to apologize for it.

Nicely done, Bill.