Bill O'Reilly lies.

Pro, imagine you have Bill Reilly's job. You must produce 6000 hours of commentary on topical issues. That's roughly equivalent to 3.5 million words, or 7000 pages of essays. You have staff help, but perhaps 80% is ultimately unscripted. How many times would you blunder, leaving out qualifying words or recalling a reference incorrectly? Critics are watching every word you say, so virtually nothing will pass unnoticed. How many times would you say something you believed was true, but which turned out not to be true? I await your assertion that errors are not possible, and therefore all must be lies. 6. In the House version of the health care bill, if you didn't buy health insurance, you would be assessed a fine and if you didn't pay the fine, then the government could put you in jail. The Senate finance Committee version did not have that provision, http://tinyurl.com... but the Baucus version of the Senate bill two weeks earlier had the jail provision. http://tinyurl.com... Coburn, who is a Republican Senator, was correct that the intent is not to put people in jail, but rather that they comply with the law. That does not contradict O'Reilly. Jail time was taken out of the bill that was ultimately passed by Congress. O'Reilly claims that Fox News commentators correctly asserted that jail was in earlier versions of the bill, but that they did not assert that it was in the final version. Critics cut all the context out of the "go to jail" pronouncements, so we don't know whether or not the Fox commentators had correctly referenced the Baucus and Pelosi versions that had the jail provision, or whether they had incorrectly referenced the final version. It seems they were talking about the versions with the jail time provision, because that was what made them worthy of comment. In any case, O'Reilly clearly thought he was being accurate in his distinction, so the intent of lying was not present. 7. O'Reilly only presented a small clip of Sherrod in the portion of his program devoted to miscellaneous events. He absolutely did not hype the story to cause the resignation. "Sherrod ended up resigning Monday afternoon, hours before O'Reilly broke the story on his show. The first reported piece on Fox News, by correspondent James Rosen, aired on Tuesday morning, and included a second video clip that added context to Sherrod's comments." http://tinyurl.com... The story was hyped by the major after the O'Reilly mention. Some say that the networks were afraid of Fox getting ahead of them on the story. O'Reilly apologized, making it clear he had erred, but did not lie. O'Reilly did say Sherrod was a liberal activist, but that part was true. In all of this, there is no suggestion that O'Reilly new in advance that the clip was taken out of context, and hence lied in presenting the story. The Obama Administration forced Sherrod to resign before the item appeared on O'Reilly. We shouldn't conclude that the Administration lied, nor should we conclude that O'Reilly lied. 8. Back in 2004, O'Reilly said he had not apologized before, when in fact he had. Pro says that it either proves O'Reilly is an "insincere person" or a liar. What it most likely proves is that O'Reilly is egotistical, so he doesn't remember his mistakes. I think it is fair to say that all nearly all big-name commentators are egotistical. That's not good, but commentators have to put themselves out there every day knowing that they are going to receive a barrage of criticism from opponents. Weak egos tend not to survive in that environment. If O'Reilly were either insincere or a liar, he would never have apologized for anything, which he clearly did. He has since apologized a number of times. Obama said during the campaign that he had visited 48 states and had another six go. So must we conclude that Obama is stupid or a liar, deliberately misstating the number of states? Not at all, humans are simply prone to making dumb mistakes. O'Reilly does it too. 9. The context "there was a declaration of war" makes it clear that O'Reilly had meant to say "we did not invade Iraq illegally" but dropped the word "illegally." Everyone knows that we invaded Iraq, so attempting to perpetrate a lie about it would make no sense at all. 10. John Edwards, not noted for honesty, had claimed that there were many homeless veterans who were being neglected by the government, and as a consequence there were large numbers "living under bridges." O'Reilly asked where such congregations of homeless veterans were, and he pledged to make sure they got help. No such congregations could be cited by anyone. The story went on for days, so anyone who had followed it would know that O'Reilly meant "homeless and deliberately neglected by government" when he said "homeless." O'Reilly interviewed government officials and others who gave detailed accounts as to the size of the problem and what was being done about it. Many troubled veterans are difficult to reach because they are drug addicted or have mental problems that cause them to reject help. It is unconstitutional to round people up on the grounds that they need help. O'Reilly provided full and fair coverage of the issue. Again, the issue is whether O'Reilly know he was making a false statement. Pro offered not a trace of evidence that O'Reilly knew he was wrong. 11. Every news organization has management. One of the jobs of management is to decide what stories ought to be covered and what angles ought to be pursued in covering them. No one leaves it up to individual newscasters whether coverage of Chilean miners ought to be downplayed in view of the latest on Lady Gaga. The implication of "pursuing an agenda" means that there is an agenda that is independent of the news of the day, like "today we will criticize Obama economic policy." Such pre-conceived agendas are evident for example, in the Journolist scandal http://tinyurl.com... in which journalists discussed how to shield Obama from Rev. Wright stories. The political Parties sometimes circulate "talking points" that they want their operatives to inject into discussions. O'Reilly, I think properly, distinguishes ordinary news management from pushing a preconceived agenda. 12. FAIR is a wildly biased leftist media "watchdog" site. A good example of the FAIR bias was shown by a comparison in which virtually the identical story was run on National Geographic and Fox News, and FAIR denounced Fox as biased while the same thing on NatGeo was deemed objective. http://news-political.com... The study Pro cited goes back to 2004, in which FAIR subjectively decided who was conservative, centrist, and progressive. They also decided what counted as an "interview" versus, say, a sound bite quotation, and they decided who was offering a political opinion as opposed to a recitation of facts or policy. These days, for example, Fox covers the White House Press briefings live every day, so does Robert Gibbs count as a liberal Democrat when scoring? At the time, there was a Republican Administration, so we would expect a preponderance of Republicans in official positions. The issue was whether or not O'Reilly believed that Fox had that proportion, and there is no evidence that he didn't believe it. 13. O'Reilly is correct. Kuntz said that "reruns are never counted," but in fact Ms. Couric's viewership is counted by summing the viewers original show played for the Eastern time zone with the "rerun" three hours later for the West Coast. It's never been any other way. Pro's reference reveals O'Reilly is doing the same thing, adding the showings in the two time zones. One can argue the semantics of "delay" versus "rerun" but the relevant fact is how many people watch the show on the day it was produced. ================= Pro has introduced no evidence of intent to deceive. The resolution is therefore negated.