Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News star, is mounting an extraordinary televised assault on the chief executive of General Electric, calling him a “pinhead” and a “despicable human being” who bears responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq.<\/p>\n
On the surface, O’Reilly’s charges revolve around GE’s history of doing business with Iran. But the attacks grow out of an increasingly bitter feud between O’Reilly and the company’s high-profile subsidiary, NBC, one that has triggered back-channel discussions involving News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker and General Electric’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt.<\/p>\n
Ailes called Zucker on his cellphone last summer, clearly agitated over a slam against him by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. According to sources familiar with the conversation, Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What looked like a dispute involving high-profile, on-air name-calling has become something of a crusade. In recent weeks, O’Reilly has taken to saying of GE, “If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt.”<\/p>\n
All, apparently, because Olbermann has mocked O’Reilly, and NBC hasn’t stopped him.
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\nI know very little about the substance behind O’Reilly slams on GE. Kurtz explained that the company has had a corporate presence in Iran for many years, but GE announced in 2005 that it would no longer accept new contracts in Iran, and would wind down its existing contracts.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, O’Reilly is apparently relentless on the subject, saying he’s “in this business” in order to “get” guys like GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt.<\/p>\n
Based on the WaPo report, O’Reilly’s bosses have offered Olbermann’s bosses something of a quid pro quo.<\/p>\n
Asked about O’Reilly’s motivation, [GE spokesman Gary Sheffer] said that executives at Murdoch’s News Corp. “tell us if the attacks on O’Reilly end, the attacks on GE will end. They’ve had conversations with our news executives saying, ‘If you stop, we’ll stop.’ ” An NBC spokeswoman confirmed the calls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Could O’Reilly and News Corp. be that<\/i> thin skinned? Do they really<\/i> care if O’Reilly is named the “worst person in the world”?<\/p>\n
Why on earth launch this kind of on-air fight between two huge multi-national companies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly have been trading barbs for quite a while, creating a relatively entertaining, good ol’ fashioned media feud. By all appearances, Olbermann seems to be enjoying the dispute far more than O’Reilly is, with the latter tending to become enraged at the mention of the prior’s name. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}