At the top of tonight’s “O’Reilly Factor,” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly cited a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier in the day that found Fox News the most trusted news organization in America (O’Reilly failed to mention the poll’s caveat, that Fox also led all cable news networks as the least trusted news organization).
O’Reilly argued FNC dominates the flow of information in the country, and the network’s primetime programs set the political agenda. “The fact is, Fox News is now a deep threat to the progressive movement, and the far left despises us,” O’Reilly said. “So they are in full attack mode, desperately trying to marginalize FNC.”
O’Reilly said among those “hating Fox News” are MSNBC and CNN, which “are getting hammered” by Fox News, and so “those agencies are hungry to participate in the attack process.” At the end of the Talking Points Memo, O’Reilly added a “footnote” about recent criticisms of his reporting, specifically in his book “Killing Kennedy” in which he claimed to hear the suicidal gunshot of a man who was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. He directed viewers to the website of his book publisher Henry Holt, which includes a statement from Bob Sirkin, a former O’Reilly colleague, who says he was with O’Reilly in Florida on that day: March 29, 1977. Other former colleagues of O’Reilly have claimed he was in Texas on that date.