He Enjoys Being Obnoxious and Rude!Bill O'Reilly is best known as the host of The O'Reilly Factor, which appears on Fox News Channel. He also hosts a radio program syndicated by Westwood One.
In a study released on May 2, 2007 titled Villains, Victims and Virtuous in Bill O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone': Revisiting World War Propaganda Techniques, Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 7 seconds, on average, during the editorials that open his program each night.
"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle." Maria Elizabeth Grabe, associate professor of telecommunications, added, "He sets up a pretty simplistic battle between good and evil. Our analysis points to very specific groups and people presented as good and evil."
Most frequently described by O'Reilly as victims were Americans, the U.S. military and the George W. Bush administration. Most frequently labeled bad were the political left -- Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O'Reilly to be on the right) -- along with illegal aliens, terrorists and foreigners in general.
The Indiana University study covered six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" editorials using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I. The researchers found that he was that he was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes -- such as "villians" or downright "evil" -- to people and groups.
Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the study found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. The seven propaganda devices include:
- Name calling -- giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
- Glittering generalities -- the oppositie of name calling;
- Card stacking -- the selective use of facts and half-truths;
- Bandwagon -- appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
- Plain folks -- an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people";
- Transfer -- carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
- Testimonials -- involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.
The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. According to this study, O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.
O'Reilly was raised in a Irish Catholic family from Brooklyn, New York. His father was an accountant and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. He grew up in a upper class suburb of Westbury, New York.
While in college at Marist, the 6 foot 4 inch O'Reilly played quarterback and several other positons on the football team. He was also a columnist for The Circle, the schools' newspaper. After graduation he moved to Miami, Florida to teach English and history in a Jesuit high school. Soon after, her earned his masters in broadcast journalism.
He held a number of television positions at WNEP-TV In Scranton, Pennsylvania. He eventually made his way to KMGH-TV in Denver, Colorado where he won an Emmy for his coverage of a skyjacking. O'Reilly also worked for television stations in Portland, Oregan, Hartford, Connecticut, and Boston. In New York, he anchored his own program, which helped him win his second Emmy for his investigation of corrupt city marshals.
In 1989, O'Reilly became part of the current affairs television program Inside Edition. He eventaully took over David Frost's position, giving him the anchor chair. He left Inside Edition in 1995 to further his education at Havard University's Kennedy School of Government. After receiving a Master's Degree in Public Administration, O'Reilly was hired as the anchor of the O'Reilly Report, which aired weeknights on Fox News. The O'Reilly Report was renamed in 1998 to The O'Reilly Factor.
On The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly discusses political and social issues of the day and hosts guests from a broad social spectrum. In 2001, the show passed Larry King Live, hosted by Larry King, to become the most watched cable news programs in the U.S. In 2004 he signed a contract with Fox News to bump his salary from $4 million to $10 million per year. He plans to retire in 2007 when his contract ends.
In October 2004, O'Reilly settled a sexual harassment suit brought against him by former producer Andrea Mackris. O'Reilly would probably like to file a harassment suit against Keith Olbermann, with whom he has an ongoing feud.
O'Reilly is married to Maureen McPhilmy. He has one daughter, Madeline, and a son, Spencer. He refuses to discuss his family publicly for security reasons, and he forbids photographs being taken of his home or family. | |
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