Bill O’Reilly Bravely Defends Fox News Against Blanket Liberal Critiques

Bill O’Reilly used his interview with Jon Stewart and the Comedy Central host’s criticism of Fox News to defend his network against the general blanket criticisms of the network.

It’s a familiar defense – an unsurprising look around the opinion vs. news spectrum on the channel. And it mostly makes sense.

O’Reilly called Stewart the “mainstream liberal point of view in America,” (this was a compliment) and made sure to note “we have no beef with moderate liberal Americans.” The royal “we” here meaning “the folks,” most likely.

He noted the main two opinion hosts (besides himself) that make FNC get labeled “Republican” are Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. For Hannity: “Shouldn’t there be one, one, program, one program on cable news hosted by a political conservative? Does CNN have anybody like that? Does MSNBC? Does Headline News?” Completely valid point – and same for what he said about Beck, who is no friend to the GOP in the same way he’s no friend to the Obama administration.

Then there was O’Reilly’s take on “news”:

As far as the rest of Fox News is concerned, we have plenty of Republicans and plenty of Democrats on the staff, but nobody here really cares about that. If you’re good at your job, you get to keep your job. If you watch the reporting by our hard news people, much of it brought to you by Bret Baier and Shepard Smith, two very fair guys, you know it’s all facts, all the time.

This is true as well, but ignores when FNC’s news programming gets criticized directly (sometimes even by those on the network, on-air). Like all cable news networks, there are hours of “news” programming to fill, and there has to be a choice made of what is the newiest part. And for Fox News, every now and then the choice is strikingly obvious and not always entirely “fair and balanced.” That’s not taking anything away from Shep or Bret Baier either.

O’Reilly also noted the morning show, Fox & Friends which he called a “hybrid news/entertainment program,” presumably allowing them to, uh, entertainingly cover Pres. Obama’s bowing problem, unlike any other FNC or cable news show.

The Stewart/O’Reilly interview (full, unedited version on next page) proves that Fox News is not afraid to have very different voices on the air, and not afraid to allow guests to serve as makeshift-ombudsman on occasion. It’s a differentiating factor for both The O’Reilly Factor and FNC as a whole – and contributes to their consistent and clear first place spot in the cable news landscape.

Here’s last night’s Talking Points:

And, why not, on the next page here’s the full O’Reilly/Stewart interview…