bill o'reilly loves public radio

» listen to the entire terry gross interview of bill o'reilly

so this morning i finally had a chance to hear the bill o'reilly interview on fresh air weekend (thie interview originally aired earlier in the week, but my public radio station only broadcasts the weekend version).

wow. what a weird interview. first of all, i have to say, i thought overall bill o'reilly did a good job with the interview. i learned things about him that i didn't know before and he actually did come off as fair and balanced for most of the interview. especially in the beginning and he was fielding some tough questions from gross who was focusing on his credibility, background, beliefs, and style.

but i was also surprised when things got out of hand. from an outsider's point of view i was actually surprised when he started getting huffy. the interview deteriorated when gross wanted to read a people magazine's reviewer's response to o'reilly's response to the interviewer's review of his book (make sense?). he began to get angry, bemoaning that terry was being harder with him than with al franken and that there was a liberal agenda to bring o'reilly down. after his rational, interesting responses to gross's questions before this, it was disappointing to see o'reilly get so wound up, angry, and beligerent. he ended the interview early, walking out of the studio leaving terry to say "and i guess that is the end of the interview...."

so here is what i think. o'reilly missed his opportunity. this was a great chance to show an audience that doesn't normally watch his show and might base their opinions of him on sound bytes and second-hand opinions, to really show what he is about. it was an opportunity for him to show that he is fair and balanced. it was an opportunity to display his intelligence, explain his thoughts on the death penalty, the environment and drug laws, and to show people that he might be more than their preconceived ideas.

i don't get cable, so i don't have a chance to watch him. plus, i find it hard to watch shows where everything is an argument with great urgency and fervor -- and i am probably a fairly typical public radio listener. this was his opportunity to show people like me what he was all about.

regarding the way gross handled herself in the interview.... it is obvious that she isn't a fan of o'reilly. and she was probably trying harder to play hard ball with him because he plays hard ball with others. but overall, it was a typical gross interview. what i like about gross is that she does make her interviews personal. she asks questions that other people don't ask or finds the tidbits that no one even thought of looking for. she did bring this to the o'reilly interview and i did enjoy learning more about him.

the unfortunate thing is style. terry is a public radio nerd (as we all are). so her style isn't quick, savvy, teeth-brightened gloss. there is stumbling and bumbling... things her listeners like but that might be easy to mock or ridicule in the main stream media.

FINALLY a few things about o'reilly. he said he doesn't like it when reviewers or interviewers claim to review his book but make it personal about him. i wonder if that is a natural response to his style, which is to go for the jugular when talking about other people? he ridicules people, dismissing them and diminishing them without allowing the other person rebuttal time. AND he says that he bases everything on fact, yet he claimed that public radio receives $1Billion in government money when it receives less than $90million (in other words, less than 10% of his claim).

it's too bad that at a time when he could have proven that he was fair and balanced that he proved the exact opposite