Keller Slams Bill O’Reilly & Yahoo!

NYT executive editor Bill Keller slammed Fox News and Yahoo! at a recent conference, and Business Week sums it up:

“As for inveterate Times-bashers like commentators Rush Limbaugh and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, he pointed out that both were, first and foremost, performers, and he claimed not to know what their true beliefs were. But he noted that O’Reilly ‘denounced’ the Times so frequently that ‘if he didn’t have The New York Times, he might be selling Ginsu knives on late-night TV.’ Along the same lines, Keller termed the Fox News Channel’s ‘fair and balanced’ tagline ‘the most ingeniously cynical slogan’ in media marketing.”

More: “Although online portal Yahoo! sent tremors through the chattering confines of journalism by announcing the high-profile hire of Kevin Sites to cover Iraq, Keller does not see them as large-scale rivals. ‘I’m confident [Yahoo! and Google] will not be the next generation of press barons,’ he said. ‘Yahoo! could buy 1,200 journalists tomorrow,’ a figure which roughly compares to those employed by the Times. But, he added, ‘to them, it’s a boutique’ business.”