You already know about Fox News Channel suing Al Franken for use of the phrase “fair and balanced,” and the suit’s inadvertent consequence of pushing Franken’s upcoming book to the top of the bestseller lists.
Yesterday, however, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, rumored to have been the driving force behind the Franken lawsuit, took time out of his busy schedule to address the suit in the conservative New York Daily News.
While most of O’Reilly’s “essay” was more a display of self-pity than an actual explanation of the Franken lawsuit, O’Reilly nevertheless offered some notable insight into his thoughts on his network, Franken, and journalism in general.
“It is simply a sorry joke to see a political activist like Al Franken labeled a satirist by The New York Times,” O’Reilly said, apropos of nothing. “Attempting to smear and destroy the reputations of those with whom you politically disagree is not satire.”
In a column that was, apparently, intended to explain his support for his network’s suit, this was the one and only reference to Franken by name. After reading it a couple of times, trying to make sense of it, I’m still not sure if it’s a criticism of Franken or the New York Times. The point O’Reilly seems to be stressing is that Franken is not, in his eyes, a satirist. That, I suppose, is a matter of taste, though I’ve always found Franken to be a very capable satirist. Why O’Reilly finds this point worthy of such attention is beyond me.
O’Reilly went on to launch an unpersuasive defense of the network that pays his salary. “Fox News has become the highest-rated news network on cable because we feature lively debate and all honest voices are welcome,” O’Reilly wrote. “We don’t do drive-by character assassinations, and we don’t denigrate opposing points of view by launching gratuitous personal attacks.”
It’s as if Bill O’Reilly has never actually seen the Fox News Channel.
I’m reminded, for example, of a recent tirade from Fox News “journalist” Neil Cavuto who chastised a professor who criticized the network’s war coverage, calling him an “obnoxious, pontificating jerk, self-absorbed, condescending imbecile, Ivy League intellectual Lilliputian” on the air. Cavuto went on to boast that he is “slanted and biased.”
And as for O’Reilly’s claim that “all honest voices are welcome,” he seems to have forgotten to mention that if the honest voices say things he doesn’t like, he’ll shut off their microphones.
So much for the “no-spin zone.”