O’Reilly having Sawyer on tonight, instead of Van Sustern, does make some sense: Sawyer’s the bigger name, Giffords is a powerful symbol of how talking heads and politicians might want to look at some of the violent rhetoric they use, and the interview has been buzzed about since the first promos started to trickle out late last week. But, in Van Susteren’s defense, she scored an interview with Gloria Cain, the wife of a man who is being bombarded with sexual harassment claims and is within the margin of error in most polls of leading the Republican field of Presidential candidates. Gloria Cain has been, up until the last few days, in the shadows; nobody knows much about her. So while Sawyer’s argument is that she has arguably the bigger name and more compelling story, Van Susteren can rightly point out that she shares a network with O’Reilly and has a story that has been buzzed about in the news for a couple weeks.
Van Sustern probably isn’t happy about this; the most popular program on her own network is helping to promote a show opposite her own on a widely-watched channel that might not need the help. Give O’Reilly’s producers credit, at the very least, for not bowing to