{"id":5970,"date":"2005-12-01T14:34:05","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T19:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5970"},"modified":"2005-12-01T14:34:05","modified_gmt":"2005-12-01T19:34:05","slug":"what-it-takes-to-make-oreillys-enemies-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-it-takes-to-make-oreillys-enemies-list\/","title":{"rendered":"What it takes to make O’Reilly’s enemies list"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of people, I was a little curious about Bill O’Reilly’s highly-touted “enemies list.” The Fox News “personality” pledged to publish a list of media operations he considers<\/a> “guttersnipes” and “smear merchants,” and given O’Reilly’s perceived adversaries, I assumed it’d be quite a directory of allegedly-liberal news outlets.<\/p>\n

Alas, like so many mysteries, this turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. O’Reilly finally unveiled his list of news outlets that have “regularly helped distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left,” and it turned out to be … pretty short<\/a>. There were a grand total of three: the New York Daily News, MSNBC, and The St. Petersburg Times.<\/p>\n

That’s it. O’Reilly said he expects to add more “in the months to come,” but assured his fans that these three “are the worst offenders.”<\/p>\n

There are any number of ways to approach such an odd list — O’Reilly couldn’t even be bothered to attack the New York Times or CBS? — but I had a different reaction. The St. Petersburg Times<\/i>?<\/p>\n

It’s not that the Times is a bad paper; it’s easily one of Florida’s best and most reliable news outlets. So how is it, exactly, that this mid-size paper has managed to infuriate Bill O’Reilly so much that he wants his legions to boycott it and its advertisers?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, for O’Reilly, it’s personal<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

“[O’Reilly] seems to have disliked our work for some time,” replied [Times Executive Editor Neil Brown]. He declined to say what specific work O’Reilly disliked, but several possible examples came up in a Google search.<\/p>\n

For instance, Times columnist Eric Deggans — in a Sept. 14, 2005, piece — criticized O’Reilly for what Deggans felt were insensitive post-Hurricane Katrina comments about poor people in New Orleans.<\/p>\n

“Deggans is a dishonest, racially motivated correspondent writing for perhaps the worst newspaper in the country,” O’Reilly responded on his Fox News program. “They don’t get more ridiculous than the St. Petersburg Times,” he said, calling it “the worst newspaper in the United States of America.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, the Times’ Deggans — who is African American, thus getting the “racially motivated” attack — was also pretty thorough in covering the sexual harassment case<\/a> filed against O’Reilly by a female producer at Fox News.<\/p>\n

So that’s<\/i> what it takes to make O’Reilly’s enemies list. It’s not about liberal news, it’s about hurting O’Reilly’s feelings. I didn’t realize the guy had such delicate sensibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a lot of people, I was a little curious about Bill O’Reilly’s highly-touted “enemies list.” The Fox News “personality” pledged to publish a list of media operations he considers “guttersnipes” and “smear merchants,” and given O’Reilly’s perceived adversaries, I assumed it’d be quite a directory of allegedly-liberal news outlets. Alas, like so many mysteries, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970","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=5970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}