Bill O’Reilly to Interview President Barack Obama on the Fox Broadcast Network Super Bowl Sunday

By Alex Weprin 

Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly will interview President Barack Obama on the Fox broadcast network Super Bowl Sunday, an FNC spokesperson confirms to TVNewser.

No other details regarding the interview were immediately available.

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has granted Super Bowl Sunday interviews to news anchors at the network with the TV rights to the big game. In 2009, Obama spoke to NBC News “Today” anchor Matt Lauer and in 2010, he sat down with “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric.

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This year, Fox Sports has the Super Bowl rights, and without a broadcast news division to call its own, it seems the interview went to Fox News Channel. Why the opinion host O’Reilly is conducting the interview, as opposed to a news anchor like Shepard Smith or Bret Baier, is unclear, although Mediaite makes a compelling case:

A proud, self-described “independent,” O’Reilly was the least antagonistic towards Obama during the presidential campaign, which Obama rewarded when he agreed to sit down for a much ballyhooed interview — an event that not only got great ratings, but appeared to help Obama in the polls. Yes O’Reilly has been a fairly vocal critic of this administration, but his critiques have been relatively tepid, which has been evident throughout the first two years of Obama’s current term.

News of the interview first appeared on The Drudge Report.

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