Bill O’Reilly And Guest: Success Of Fox News Has ‘Pushed Mainstream News Further Left’

Bill O’Reilly spoke about media coverage last night on The O’Reilly Factor, and specifically exasperated why the major network news outlets were ignoring the “New Black Panther” controversy that is getting so much play on Fox News. In the eyes his guest Byron York, “the continued success of Fox…conservative talk radio, and of conservative sites on the internet have actually pushed the so-called mainstream media a little farther to the left than they were before.”

York is the Chief Political Correspondent for the Washington Examiner, and contributor to Fox News. He explained to O’Reilly what he saw as reasons why the mainstream media have ignored the Black Panther whistleblower story. What they neglect to discuss is how O’Reilly had misreported this very story the previous night.

As Tommy Christopher reported yesterday “O’Reilly gets a bunch of things wrong in his segment, not only calling for the Obama DOJ to prosecute someone who has already been prosecuted, but stating repeatedly that there were 3 New Black Panthers at the Philadelphia polling place.” O’Reilly had also erroneously claimed that the Justice Department had provide no clear rationale for dismissing charges against the Black Panther Party, when the lawyers for the DOJ Civil Rights Division drafted a detailed memo outlining the legal basis for the dismissals.

Throughout this, and other segments, O’Reilly runs footage of a member of a Black Panther King Samir looming outside of a Philadelphia polling place. Perhaps he should heed his own advice of three years ago, when he admonished directors of the documentary Jesus Camp for exploiting the bizarre acts of extremists to make a political point, saying “anyone can do that, and it proves nothing. I could film militant secular progressives in S&M bars all night long. What does that prove? There will always be people on the fringe.”

A rough transcript of the exchange follow the video clip below.

O’Reilly: In the Impact Segment tonight, this should come as no surprise when the head of Nasa said that part of his job is reaching out to the Muslim world, the story was ignored by the network news. Also the black panther election controversy total blackout on the nightly news broadcast. Joining us now from Washington, Byron York, chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. Byron, I didn’t cover the Nasa story either although the fox news hard news people did obviously. Should I have covered it.

York: The Factor is just one show on Fox, and there was a significant amount of coverage on Fox. So if you watch the network for any period of time you would know about the story. contrast that to readers of the New York Times, readers of the The Washington Post, and viewers of the broadcast network newscast. If you depended on them for your news and a lot of people do, you would literally not know that this had happened. that’s a lot different.

O’Reilly: Okay. the reason I didn’t cover it is I have a problem with it. You know, if the head of Nasa or the head of any other government agency wan to try to make friends with the Muslim world, that’s fine with me. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all as long as they don’t do anything stupid or compromise themselves in any way or insult people, victims of 9/11, their families. If he wants to make overtures to the Muslim world about science and things like that, I don’t have a problem. So I didn’t cover it. But, far more important is the blackout of the back panther story which has now reached up into subpoena level with the human rights commission. And this is stunning when you have the three network newscasts ignoring this story with all of the provocative sound, with all of the testimony by Mr. Christian in front of the committee, and you have Couric and Williams and Diane Sawyer basically saying, hey, we have got more important things to do than tell you about this unbelievable controversy. I don’t get this at all. Why do you think they ignored it?

York: Well, let me tell you why I think this is happening. I think the continued success of Fox, the continued success of conservative talk radio, and of conservative sites on the Internet have actually pushed the so-called mainstream media a little farther to the left than they were before. And this is how it happens. In a story like Van Jones or like the new black panthers or about the Nasa Muslim outreach story, when you have outlets on the right and they consider Fox News to be right wing, covering these things, they begin to see their role as a corrective, as a counter weight to that information. So, one of the ways they handled that is just simply to ignore it and as a matter of fact in the Van Jones matter they didn’t report the story until after Jones had resigned. So I think there is a growing sense among people at the network newscasts, at The Washington Post,, at the New York Times, that they function as kind of a counter balance to what they sees a right wing misinformation out there. And that’s why i think you see him behaving this way.

O’Reilly: The network news has lost another million viewers. You know, they are going down the tubes. There is no doubt that they are. The New York Times. Big, big trouble. The Washington Post, you know, Newsweek is out. It’s gone. So you are telling me that because of Fox News’ success, they have to ignore stories that might attract viewers. This black panther story is a very interesting story with a lot of aspect to it. You are telling me that they are going to give up readers and viewers because they don’t like what fox news does?

York: I think that’s exactly what’s happening.