From
The Guardian
News show feud boils over into open warfare
Responding well to criticism has never been among Bill O'Reilly's strong points. The star of America's most-watched cable news show, shown daily on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, has a habit of yelling at guests who disagree with him to "shut up".
He rails at the "far-left internet smear sites" who take him to task for remarks such as his open invitation to al-Qaida to attack the liberal stronghold of San Francisco. And he once threatened a caller to his Fox radio show with "a little visit" from the company's security personnel.
But now a long-running feud between O'Reilly and his less-watched rival, Keith Olbermann, has boiled over into open warfare between networks. At a meeting of the prestigious Television Critics' Association in California, Olbermann, who works for the MSNBC network, donned an O'Reilly mask and gave a Nazi salute, provoking a furious response from Fox's chairman, Roger Ailes.
"Clearly he has no viewers except those he gets when he attacks Fox News," said Mr Ailes, a former image consultant for the first president Bush. Olbermann's Nazi gesture, he said, had gone "over the line".
The confrontation came after several months of on-air goading by Olbermann, a professional ironist whose style contrasts sharply with O'Reilly's populism and "no-nonsense" approach. The MSNBC presenter has given O'Reilly his Worst Person in the World award no fewer than 15 times, and frequently returns with glee to a sexual harrassment case the Fox host settled out of court in 2004.
Legal documents in the harrassment case included a transcript of a telephone call O'Reilly had made to his producer, Andrea Mackris, in which he described a sexual fantasy involving a shower and a loofah. But at one point he forgot the word "loofah", referring instead to "the falafel thing". Olbermann now has only to mention "falafel" on his show to heap more derision on his rival.
Olbermann's attacks are somewhat surprising in the straightlaced world of American TV news, but more surprising still has been Fox and O'Reilly's inability to resist taking the bait. Ten years after the conservative channel was born, it has surged far ahead of both its rivals, CNN and MSNBC. O'Reilly regularly draws 2.5 million viewers while Olbermann struggles to reach 350,000.
Nonetheless, O'Reilly tried to organise a petition to get his far less prominent rival fired, and chided him while on air for descending to personal attacks. But that only led to detectible surges in Olbermann's audience, who observed that if O'Reilly did not indulge in personal attacks himself, "he would be a mime".
"You don't punch down," Olbermann told the New York Times, expressing mystification at O'Reilly's responses. "If you're in my position, you punch upwards."
Fox has long faced disdain from liberals for promoting itself under the slogan "Fair and balanced", despite the unmistakeable rightwing bias of its coverage. Hannity & Colmes, a flagship show purporting to pitch a conservative against a liberal in a fair fight, in fact features a smooth-talking, well-groomed right-winger versus a tongue-tied centrist. O'Reilly, for his part, has said he wishes Hurricane Katrina "had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else", and claims that the Guardian "might [as well] be edited by Osama bin Laden".
But the channel's insistence on striking back at its enemies is not just a matter of O'Reilly or Mr Ailes being unable to control their tempers. In a recent statement, a spokeswoman for Fox, Irina Briganti, sought to attack Olbermann by referring to his disputes with previous employers.
"Because of his personal demons, Keith has imploded everywhere he's worked," Ms Briganti said. "From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O'Reilly and all things Fox, it's obvious Keith is a train-wreck waiting to happen ... In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion."
Fox refused to make any further comment on the feud yesterday.
Those Fox News controversies in full:
2002 Following a change in White House rhetoric, Fox adopts a channel-wide policy of referring to suicide bombers as "homicide bombers"
2003 Fox reporter Geraldo Rivera agrees to leave Iraq, to avoid expulsion by the US military, after drawing a map in the sand to show viewers highly sensitive information about the locations of American forces
2004 Leaked internal Fox memos list "talking points" for reporters on air. George Bush's "political courage and tactical cunning" should be noted "in our reporting throughout the day" on Iraq, executive John Moody writes
2005 CNN founder Ted Turner, reflecting on Fox's ratings, compares the channel to Nazi propaganda, noting Hitler also "got the most votes". "Ted is understandably bitter, having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind," a Fox spokesman responded. "We wish him well."
2006 An on-screen title banner introducing a foreign policy discussion segment reads: All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?
