By Kevin Foley
Bill O'Reilly used to be a mediocre TV reporter who found marginal fame hosting a gossip show called "Inside Edition," which he once claimed had won a prestigious Peabody Award until Al Franken discovered he was fibbing.
Later O'Reilly became the big dog at Fox News, where he vents his spleen Monday through Friday in the guise of a serious journalist, usually targeting anything Democratic or progressive.
Bill-O is brassy, bullying and opinionated. In other words, a perfect fit for Fox.
So why President Barack Obama would give this insufferable lout the time of day is anyone's guess. But there he was, sitting for an interview with O'Reilly before the Super Bowl. The result was another glaring example of why Obama's PR team is butchering their man's presidency.
By one count, O'Reilly – predictably – cut the President of the United States off more than 40 times, surpassing even Fox colleague Bret Baier's record for rudeness when he sat down to interrupt Obama last year.
It was a performance that went well beyond disrespectful. Impartiality was blown away in a hurricane of O'Reilly hubris.
"That interview…is the most widely viewed interview, I think, of all time because of the Internet," O'Reilly crowed after verbally mugging Obama. "I wanted people who don't know Fox News and all they hear about is the liberal media defining us to know that we don't have any personal animus against the President of the United States."
O'Really?
Serious journalists interested in facts and insight customarily let the interviewee complete his thoughts. That, and it's just common courtesy not to interrupt. One should especially mind their manners when talking with the most powerful man in the world.
So how is it Fox's blowhard-in-chief ever got through the front door? In fact, why is Fox News still afforded White House press credentials at all? Where's the upside?
Fox has long since dropped the pretense of being anything other than a 24-7 communications organ for the far right wing of the Republican Party, according to a former Fox News employee who came forward this week to confirm what many have known for some time.
"It is (Fox's) M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats," the anonymous source told MediaMatters for America, a liberal media watch dog group. "They're a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news. You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks."
The nods and winks seem to be coming from the very top, where former GOP operative and Fox News president Roger Ailes recently called Obama a "socialist."
"…if you watch most of the programming on that channel, I don't think you would find many of those comments surprising," responded Robert Gibbs, the outgoing White House spokesman.
The president has admitted he's having trouble getting his messages across to Americans. So why pretend Fox is objective and wants to help? It's like Burger King inviting McDonald's to review its newest sandwich. No good can come of it.
Yet the president's PR people let the "fair and balanced" Fox "reporter" make a Bozo bop bag out of Obama.
It's all red meat for an audience who mostly didn't vote for Obama and mostly hate him and all he represents, thanks largely to Fox and its on-air news and opinion talent. The president was a heavy underdog going in and the field was tilted in Bill-O's favor.
Obama never had a chance.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |