Bill O’Reilly and Fox News: They’re in It Together

[Blue_Tires]

Hours after the news broke that Brian Williams had misrepresented his account of a helicopter trip in Iraq, he issued an on-air apology. NBC News started an investigation, and within days had suspended Mr. Williams, calling his actions “wrong and completely inappropriate.”

When the magazine Mother Jones reported that Bill O’Reilly had engaged in self-aggrandizing rhetoric about his coverage of the Falklands war, he called one of the authors of the article “an irresponsible guttersnipe” and used his nightly show to fight back against his accusers. His bosses at Fox News, including the chief executive, Roger Ailes, rallied to his defense.

Fox’s handling of the controversy says a lot about the network. It also says a lot about its most visible star, a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the parameters and tenor of Fox News, in the process ushering in a new era of no-holds-barred, intentionally divisive news coverage.

Since dethroning CNN’s Larry King as the king of cable news almost 14 years ago, Mr. O’Reilly has helped transform a start-up news channel into a financial juggernaut, with estimated annual profits of more than $1 billion. He and Fox News have risen not on the back of big interviews or high-impact investigations but on the pugnacious brand of conservatism personified by Mr. O’Reilly....

...His first book, in 1998, was a crime novel, “Those Who Trespass,” a violent and sexually explicit revenge fantasy about an unhinged broadcast journalist who covered the Falklands war. After experiencing a career setback while covering the conflict, the journalist murders the network executives and correspondents who have slighted him....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/business/media/for-bill-oreilly-and-fox-news-a-symbiotic-relationship.html?_r=0

[VanillaRhapsody]

1. starting to sound like an unhinged sociopath....

Yikes...I had no idea about that book....really creepy!

[Jefferson23]

2. From 2004, on Those Who Trespass:

Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004

“Those Who Trespass” by Bill O’Reilly

In the Fox News celeb's resurrected 1998 novel -- yes, the one with the bad sex writing -- a TV news personality addicted to fame becomes a serial killer. Plus: To hook chicks, be a tough guy and a little boy at the same time!

Michael Hastings

Bill O’Reilly wants to sell you a part of himself. This week, it’s not a membership to his Web site or the “Spin Stops Here” doormat, or any of the other merchandise he regularly hawks on his show. No, he’s selling his first work of fiction, “Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television.” Originally published in 1998 by a small press, it was rereleased last week in a Broadway Books trade-paper edition. Mel Gibson has already optioned the rights for the movie, certainly a change of pace from the “The Passion of the Christ.” Last Monday night on his Fox News show, O’Reilly billed the book as an “R-rated thriller” that’s “not for children, not for adults who find strong situations objectionable.” The novel, he says, will give the reader an insider’s view of the media and the New York Police Department.

A close read, however, gives you an inside view of the author’s mind. Like many other works of fiction — think Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman books or John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom series — it seems largely autobiographical. The talented talk-show host serves up characters who are paranoid, arrogant, insecure and supremely egotistical. On television, those qualities are O’Reilly’s greatest assets — his personality fills the screen as he strikes down enemies at the New York Times, CNN and NPR, derides Al Franken, and defends himself against an Internet infested with “smear merchants.” Translated to the page, however, those assets are fatal flaws.

The autobiographical evidence is clear: Both main characters are thinly veiled versions of O’Reilly himself. The protagonist is Tom O’Malley, a tough-talking Irish-American detective from Levittown, Long Island (O’Reilly’s hometown). Our antagonist, a deranged killer, is Shannon Michaels, a tough-talking news broadcaster who enjoys telling it like it is and making enemies. Michaels starts his career as a foreign correspondent for a big TV network and gets sidelined to a lesser TV gig. (O’Reilly reported overseas for ABC News before heading to the tabloid show “Inside Edition.”) With O’Reilly’s personality divided between good and evil, the cat-and-mouse game — detective vs. killer — begins.

in full: http://www.salon.com/2004/02/17/o_reilly_3/

[Blue_Tires]

3. Thanks for this

brilliant find....

[Jefferson23]

6. You're most welcome. n/t

[Electric Monk]

4. FOX firing O'Reilly for lying would be like the Food Network firing one of their hosts for cooking

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026285425

[Marie Marie]

5. Great analogy.