Fisk wars…
Johnny Dollar counter-fisks Keith Olbermann/Media Matters for America’s fisking of Bill O’Reilly over comments O’Reilly made on his radio show…
When Olbermann delivered his broadside, we immediately went to Media Matters where, as expected, we found the source for his tirade. It struck us that O’Reilly was recalling off the top of his head a statement he made years ago, yet at the bottom of their piece Media Matters only cited the transcript for one day. Is it possible that O’Reilly did say what he claimed, only not on that particular show? We found what we were looking for on the very next O’Reilly Factor airing, a special Sunday edition. It began with his nightly “talking points” memo:
BILL O’REILLY: But in order to fully win the peace, discipline and order must quickly be imposed by the coalition. There should be martial law, and lawbreakers must be arrested by coalition forces. Chaos always leads to more chaos. If the USA really wants to help the Iraqi people, it must immediately establish a firm rule of law.
I really can’t believe I was ever a fan of Keith Olbermann’s. I’m still no fan of O’Reilly’s but I really see now that they are as each as bad as the other and now I’m not even sure that Keith isn’t worse. Is he just blindly repeating everything Media Matters says now without doing any fact-checking to make sure it checks out? All it takes is a simple Lexis-Nexis search but apparently that’s more time than Olbermann’s staff wants to take. I know there have been cuts at MSNBC but seriously, are they just lifting all of their material straight from unsourced internet articles now? This is pathetic. He owes O’Reilly an apology. He owes his viewers an apology. I’m not holding my breath for either though.
Comment by Alison — December 2, 2006 @ 7:10 pm
MSNBC should apologise to BOR for letting this go on for so long.
Comment by Trevnoc — December 3, 2006 @ 4:10 am