Wednesday, May 02, 2007

O'Reilly's Bad Mouth

Bill O'Reilly has become one of the most closely watched figures in the right-wing media set lately. The things that come out of his mouth are well documented by sites such as Media Matters and Newshounds. Now Indiana University has published a study that finds the fear-monger says something derogatory every 6.8 seconds in his 'editorial' segment of the show. Damn, 6.8 seconds, thats quicker than I breathe regularly.

From ThinkProgress:

The study documented six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials “using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.” Researchers found that O’Reilly “was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes — such as ‘villians’ or downright ‘evil’ — to people and groups.

Some findings from the study:

Fear was used in more than half (52.4 percent) of the commentaries, and O’Reilly almost never offered a resolution to the threat. For example, in a commentary on “left-wing” media unfairly criticizing Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, O’Reilly considered this an example of America “slowly losing freedom and core values,” and added, “So what can be done? Unfortunately, not much.”

– The researchers identified 22 groups of people that O’Reilly referenced in his commentaries, and while all 22 were described by O’Reilly as bad at some point, the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left — Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O’Reilly to be on the right).


Surprise, surprise. Mr. No Spin Zone gets caught by another group that is paying attention to his crazy antics. Welcome to the club Indiana University. The reality is that Bill O is nothing but a wingnut gasbag that makes the political right warm and gooey with his hate-filled program. O'Reilly repeatedly says he is an independent when confronted about the facts of his show, pathetically trying to portray a sense of fair and balanced coverage of the news. Of course, that is just a load of shit. We all know it Bill, you might as well just come out and admit it.