• bloc said on Aug 20, 2007....

  Don't forget the most important part. If you aren't a journalist then it's ok to lie and deceive :/ 

• MissMimi said on Aug 20, 2007....

  He's not a journalist.  He's a loudmouthed windbag and a shill for the Republican party.

• curmudgeon said on Aug 20, 2007....

  Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence who has listened to his show would know that he's a commentator, not a news reporter.
   
  That's just plain obvious.
   
  He's conservative and unapoligetic about it. So what? He doesn't pretend to be otherwise.
   
  An example of a shill would be Wolf Blitzer or Chris Matthews, who pretend to be journalists but are really obsequious liberal parrots.
   
  This post is yet another typical example of ignorant, moronic liberal diatribe, demonstrating once again the vapid lack of intellect or reason that permeates the entire left wing.

• bloc said on Aug 20, 2007....

  @curm
  the problem with hannity isn't that he's an unapologetic conservative, it's that he has no integrity. It's amazing that you guys will justify rank dishonesty if the person is an "unapologetic conservative"? Why the double standard?
  
  
  Btw, are you talking about this Chris Matthews? he sounds like a shill alright, for Bush!

• Eilan said on Aug 20, 2007....

  I never thought Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly were journalists.  They're entertainers, just like Rush Limbaugh.

• silverwhisper said on Aug 21, 2007....

  i think eilan's nailed it most succinctly. :>
  
  ed

• lioneljay said on Aug 21, 2007....

  Curm, surely you didn't think that I ever believed that Hannity was a journalist? The thing is, a few months back we had quite a lively discussion around here about whether or not Fox News was more or less biased than other news organizations in the mainstream media (CBS, CNN, etc.) and more than a few conservative SCers argued forcefully that Fox provided every bit as much unbiased news as the other organizations. I thought to link the discussion in my original post but couldn't find it.
  
  My point all along has been that the entertainers such as Hannity and O'Reilly decry the true nature of Fox News - that it's an unabashed shill for the right wing using the veneer of a news network to add luster and seeming credibility. Unfortunately, vast quantities of unread members of the public buy the veneer and take as fact all the venom and falsehoods that Hannity, O'Reilly and their ilk spew across the airwaves every day.
  

• LloydTheBarber said on Aug 21, 2007....

  I disagree with the opinion that O'reily and Hannity are "entertainers". I really dont find them the least bit entertaining...

• mobil said on Aug 21, 2007....

  Littlej, so your point makes no sense. CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and MSNBC been doing for decades for the left what you claim Fox is doing now for the right. Yes, yes, why the double standard? I suppose being on the left it's impossible to tell when your team's cheerleaders have their pom poms off to one side.
   
  I have come to a conclusion as it concerns political leanings. No matter if you lean right or left. Unless you are a (can't make it on the outside college proffessor) and have young minds to mold. No ones going to change anyones mind. It's senseless to argue it.
   
  So, why am I here? I dunno, I guess I like to fling flung around sometimes haha.

• bloc said on Aug 21, 2007....

  @mobil
  the idea that hannity is the right wing version of cronkite is absurd. I'm unsure why you guys don't understand that our problem with hannity isn't his bias, it's his total lack of integrity which also permeates fox news.

• mobil said on Aug 21, 2007....

  @bloc, I think you need to do some reading about Cronkite. Do you remember him? Yes, I will be as honest as I can here. I don't like Hannity, he's bias as hell I won't deny that, how could I haha.
   
  I don't see O'reily that way at all though. Now, can you be honest about O'reily? haha

• bloc said on Aug 21, 2007....

  did you even read what I said. I have no problem with bias, it's a lack of integrity that makes me dislike hannity and big O. Both lie and deceive on a regular basis. Neither are interested in an actual discussion of the issues. 

• lioneljay said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Mobil, there is a huge difference between having a political belief and allowing that belief to control how you give the news. Yes, Walter Cronkite has and did have liberal beliefs. However, he studiously avoided letting those beliefs affect his news reports. Here is what he said on the subject:
  
  "I'm a liberal, but I'm not biased. Seriously. ... A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism. We all have our likes and our dislikes. But ... when we're doing news -- when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics -- it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism."
  
  Source
  
  Elsewhere in that same interview, Cronkite was asked about Fox News. His feeling is that it's ok for Fox News to present biased news reports so long as they're clear to their public that that's what they're doing. My own take is that anyone with half a brain can see that Fox News presents a biased view of the events of the day, but not everyone sees that. And when they call themselves "fair and balanced" they're stretching it in my view.
  
  Further, as  bloc indicated above, integrity matters. Cronkite did not make false statements to make a politician look bad. Hannity and O'Reilly do so as a matter of daily practice.
  

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Bloc and LJ, both of you are terribly bias, as am I. How in the hell are we able to tell who’s is and isn’t when we ourselves are so polarized in our positions?

  Look, I don’t like Hannity because he’s a right wing cheerleader and I myself am as right wing as you two are left wing. I don’t like Hannity’s one sidedness, yes he's bias. Bill O’reily isn’t that way at all and no he doesn’t lie, nor does Hannity, that’s total left wing bias bullshit.

  Cronkite was an atheist and extremely left wing, no he wasn’t Hannity, but Hannity isn’t a news anchor, he’s a political commentator. AND, if you don’t think Cronkite nuanced the evening news with his own personal left wing views, you weren’t paying attention. By the way, it was Cronkite who turned the nation against the Vietnam war in one newscast.

  Claims that Hannity and O’riely are making false statements, you’re gonna have to give me an example. I don’t know what specifically you’re taking about. Now, Dan Rather and CBS, what a crock of shit has come out of that network over the years. You boys can’t see it, I can, you’ve been completly brainwashed. Now that a fair and balanced network has come along, all you can do is cry foul.

  If the American people would have known Cronkite was a atheist, he would have went up in a puff of smoke. How about Dan Rather? Defend Dan, will someone please take Dan Rather’s defense?

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  "Bill O’reily isn’t that way at all and no he doesn’t lie, nor does Hannity, that’s total left wing bias bullshit."
  
  I'll get back to you on this. Big O is also extremely biased, but I'll show that as I show his lies.
  
  Your assertion that fox is fair and balanced is laughable.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  bloc,
  Where you go to get your information on his lying. I suppose that place is not laughable haha..........oh no, am I laughing to early?  haha.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  I'm going ot post them. keep an eye on my blog and we'll see if you're laughing. We'll also see how much integrity you have. 
  
  
  p.s. - one thing I've learned in life is not to talk shit unless I'm certain I'll come out on top. 

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  One thing I've learned in my life is not to shit until you make certain you have something to wipe with !

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  my post on big O. I will be adding more.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Been there, take that stuff down before you embarrass yourself further.

• lioneljay said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Mobil, you insult the source of your native intelligence when you refuse to use it. It's such a shame that you're allowing your political beliefs cloud your judgment (and you're hardly alone in this). Bill O'Reilly has been caught lying and fabricating so many times that it's laughable to see that Faux News still gives him airtime and a paycheck.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  @lionel
  Check out the post I linked in my last comment. It highlights big O's  lack of integrity. It also shows that mobil has no interest in the truth.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Boys, the truth is obviously in the eye of the beholder here. I've watched for fifty years as viewers have been taken down the prim rose path with network news.
   
  How could you see it? If judgement is clouded, we are all guilty of it. We want to see the truth, but wouldn't know it if it slapped us in the face.
   
  Don't you realize there are more than one truth? For one, there is your truth and my truth. Damit boys, I see Bill O'reily as a decent honest man. You guys see Dan Rather in that way. This is an arguement we cannot settle, not between us we can't....... LJ, you and bloc can see your truth.
   
  I can see the truth with anyone who sees life, liberty and the persuit of happiness as I do. The nation is split in half and both halves see the truth, their truth.
   
  I'm not insulting anyone LJ and my intelligence isn't at issue here, nor is yours. What's at issue is how we view the world and how we desperately want things to be.
   
  The truth lies somewhere in the middle guys, by knowing that and understanding it, we become just a little bit smarter......thanks LJ...........thanks Bloc

• lioneljay said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Mobil, you just contradicted yourself. If you have your truth and bloc and I have ours, how can it be that the truth lies somewhere in the middle?
  
  Also, I never once said that I see Dan Rather as a decent honest man. But actually it's very easy to settle the argument over whether or not Bill O'Reilly lies. That he does so on almost every show has been demonstrated over and over again.
  
  I notice that you chose not to respond to the Cronkite quote directly.
  
  Furthermore, what gives you the impression that I'm biased? I admire and agree with Andrew Sullivan nearly as often as I agree with certain liberals. Where's the bias?
  

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  LJ
  "Mobil, you just contradicted yourself. If you have your truth and bloc and I have ours, how can it be that the truth lies somewhere in the middle?"
  
  Mobil
  "The truth lies somewhere in the middle guys, by knowing that and understanding it, we become just a little bit smarter....."

   

  No contradiction LJ, what I said through all of what I said above your comment, is that none of us can see the truth. We are too bias in our views. If you don't see the bias in yourself LJ, I can't help you.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  I won't take Dan Rather's defense because I didn't watch him, but there is a clear lesson to be learned from this. His network takes the truth far more seriously than fox news or hannity and o'reilly would have been fired just like Dan was.
  
  What's amazing to me is that the neocons always assume a strawman. Mobil assumes that we view Rather the same way he views big O. More importantly, he views big O as honest purely because he's a right winger and he assumes that we view Rather the same way for the same reasons. I hate to break it to you, but I'm not the leftwing version of yourself. I care about real truth and have demonstrated O'reilly's lack of integrity. You have demonstrated that you don't care about the real truth and will continue to view O'reilly as honest and decent purely because he is on your side of the fence. 
  
  
  oddly you seem to think that cronkite was terrible because he was an atheist. That's some serious bigotry on your part.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Bigotry is an interesting word bloc, another one of those subjective things that people call each other while behaving the same way themselves.
   
  When you are stating your case, it's important to examine your own motives and your bigotry due to those motives. Bloc, you like LJ have  bias, a  huge bias and both of you spout it here all the time. To deny your bias either you or LJ would make even Cronkite laugh.
   
  It's that bias that doesn't allow you to see the truth, this isn't rocket science bloc, follow along with me. Go back up and read, really read what I said a while ago.
   
  Damn, I'll admit I am bias, if you can't with all that you've written, you would be laughed off any public display you were put on. i don't want people laughing at you bloc. I just want you to understand this simple truth and it's about the only truth I've seen on political pages here in a long time.
   
  Truth is pure, it has no sides and it doesn't suffers fools lightly. You are bias, I am bias. Every last one of us is bias in some fashion, bigoted too.
   
  I see you reaching to prove your points, a real stretch sometimes bloc. Understand this one thing, if you can't understand anything else I've taught you today.
   
  Bias can't see the truth, you are bias, I am bias. Until that changes, we can't begin to argue the truth, let alone Bill O'reily, Dan Rather or even Uncle Walter.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  I think it's you that hasn't been reading what I say. I've said over and over, not only in this thread, that I don't have any problems with bias. We are all biased just as you say. The problems I have with big O are his lack of integrity. I understand your point about bias, but it's tangential to the point I've been making this whole time. Do you understand my point, that I don't like big O because he has no integrity?
  
  
  As for bigotry, claiming that a person is bad simply because of their religious beliefs is a serious bout of bigotry in my mind. 

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  I didn't say Walter was bad, I said if the American people knew, he would have been gone in a puff of smoke. The American people were pretty bigoted at that time bloc......it was considered good to be bigoted about athiests at that time. Things change and they'll change again.
   
  Ok, I question your intergrity? How can you have integrity when you are bias? It appears to me you are trying very hard to to defame O'reily publicly. You can't claim the truth because you are bias. You are jumping to conclusions and painting your own canvas about O'reily. I saw the clips, they appear to be bullshit to me, but I can't completly truthful or shall we say objective, because I like the man.
   
  Where does that leave us bloc?

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  "You can't claim the truth because you are bias."
  
  I don't believe this and I don't think you believe it either. We are all biased so does that mean that no one can claim the truth?
  
  
  Again, you are conflating bias and integrity. Let me give an example of the difference. These will be very clear examples, we can get into more nuanced ones later if you'd like
  
  
  Lack of integrity (saying something that you know isn't true)
  Bill O claimed that france lost "billions" because of a boycott and he said that info was from the "paris business review". This is a lie, there is no paris business review and I have seen no study that's shown that france lost "billions". Bill O has not corrected this mistake despite of it being widely publicized.
  
  
  Bias 
  a blogger that writes honestly about all the good things that the republican congress did when they were in power, but fails to write about the good things done by the democrats. Everything they say is true or debatable and they believe it to be true. They are not trying to trick or deceive people and if a person points out a good thing the dems did or a bad thing the repubs did they are able to discuss it in an honest fashion.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  i reread the cronkite stuff and you're right. I apologize about the bigotry claim.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Bloc, there is a Paris Business Review, I found it. The article about France losing billions of dollars was in there April first issue. April fools and the article was a joke article. I don't know who O'reily has doing his leg work, but it very well could have been that they didn't know the article was a joke.
   
  Anyway, you can take back your apoligy, I am a bigot. What the hell is wrong with that? As far as I can tell, everyone is in some way.
   
  Now, as for integrity, the clip you used and you yourself say O'riely has no integrity when that man in the video was wrong and you were wrong about the Paris Business Review.......Does that mean you have no integrity? Or the other guy? I don't know about him, but I (don't get a big head) think you happen to have integrity, you simply got it wrong about the Paris Business Review.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  are you referring to the website of the paris business review?

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Which one?  There were quite a few, many of them cracking jokes about this.

• bloc said on Aug 22, 2007....

  Check the other post where we are talking about this.

• mobil said on Aug 22, 2007....

  I did, you were right, all those sites were a hoax. I wrote to Bill's staff, asked them about it, waiting for a reply ok?

• kelly said on Aug 23, 2007....

  "I never thought Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly were journalists.  They're entertainers, just like Rush Limbaugh."
  
  
  So where does the entertainment come in?  Perhaps you're talking about the commercial breaks.

• bewaresmoothtalkers said on Aug 23, 2007....

  LJ....... Just a few little points for your discussion. Hannity is not a Journalist nor has he every claimed to be & he not only attended the $250.00 a plate fund raiser for Guiliani but he helped to organize it. I think all your know-it-alls need to read Bill O'reilly's resume. He not only is a journalist but has been a reporter. He holds two Masters degrees-(Broadcast Journalism from Boston University & Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government).

  I would like to think if your going to come up with actual examples of  Hannity or O'Reilly lying, at least make it something in a news story that would have some effect on they're viewers. Maybe like the story about the exploding gas tank on the Chevy truck, that was staged by a certain TV Network, or how about a certain Reporter that was writting stories for the New York Times that turned out to be false.  

• bloc said on Aug 23, 2007....

  I've given many such examples. 

• kelly said on Aug 24, 2007....

  "or how about a certain Reporter that was writting stories for the New York Times that turned out to be false."
  
  
  You mean Jason Blair?  Hm, he was fired.  Hannity and O'Reilly just keep going on. 

• bloc said on Aug 24, 2007....

  @kelly
  maybe the NY times reporter they are talking about is judith miller.
  
  
  You know, she's the one that was all chummy with the Bush admin and reguritated their claims about WMD without being honest about the source of those claims. Then the same Bush Admin that told her that b.s. went on television and used her reports as proof that they were right. Yeah, that New York times ;)

• bewaresmoothtalkers said on Aug 24, 2007....

  Kelly.......That's correct, now would you mind telling me a News story that either man has lied about? I don't mean a misstatement or where one of their research staff members made a mistake. Oh; least I forget, lets not overlook the error that Tom Brokaw made on National TV, when speaking to Bob Costas-"They(FBI)probably have enough to arrest him right now,probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well. There are still some holes in this case." You know of course I'm talking about Richard Jewell,the security guard in Atlanta. NBC paid Mr. Jewell $500,000 for the comments made by Mr. Brokaw. Why wasn't Brokaw or Rather fired ?

• bloc said on Aug 24, 2007....

  "I don't mean a misstatement or where one of their research staff members made a mistake"
  
  Do you keep the same forgiving standard for those that aren't on your side of the fence? If you look at my recent post on O'reilly there is an audio clip where he makes up a response that Condi didn't say in any way.

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