40% Consider Bill O’Reilly A Journalist

This is the most ridiculous item of the day: “About 40% of Americans say they consider talk show host Bill O’Reilly a journalist,” but only 30% would describe Bob Woodward that way. That’s the (slightly misleading) lead on this AP story. A recent Annenberg poll found that “more than a quarter said talk show host Rush Limbaugh” was a journalist, “while one in five said they considered newspaper columnist George Will to be a journalist.” I hope the center publishes the full results soon…

> Update: 11:09am: Howard Kurtz has more. “Television stars tended to score the highest, suggesting that name recognition may be a factor in the results. Peter Jennings is deemed a journalist by 79 percent of the respondents, followed by Mike Wallace (64 percent), Katie Couric (48 percent), Brian Williams (42 percent), O’Reilly, Larry King (37 percent), Chris Matthews (33 percent), Woodward, Limbaugh and Will.”