Late Night: Bill O'Reilly reluctantly fist bumps David Letterman

Any time Bill O'Reilly visits "The Late Show," it's pretty much guaranteed to get testy. While David Letterman is first and foremost a comedian, he's also fairly outspoken when it comes to politics, and he's certainly not afraid of grilling his guests. And, well, we all know O'Reilly is hardly a shrinking violet, either. 

On Wednesday night, Letterman welcomed O'Reilly then jumped right into the fray, asking O'Reilly about his feelings about the Iraq war and the death of Osama bin Laden. O'Reilly admitted that, "in hindsight, absolutely we should have done that Iraq thing in a different way," even going so far as to say, "I really wish that didn't happen."

But he stopped just short of agreeing with Letterman's suggestion that the war had delayed the quest for Bin Laden. 

"At some point George W. Bush said, 'I don't really think about Osama bin Laden anymore,' " Letterman argued. At first, O'Reilly claimed Bush had never said such a thing, but Letterman stuck to his guns. "We got it on video," he said.  

"All right," O'Reilly finally conceded, throwing his hands up in the air. 

"So we're together so far. Get in here," Letterman said, extending his fist in a gesture of goodwill. O'Reilly wouldn't budge, so Letterman grabbed his guest's limp hand and bumped it. 

Later in the interview, Letterman also asked why President Obama doesn't get more credit for what he's accomplished. O'Reilly gave Obama high marks for his handling of foreign policy and for saving the auto industry, but he said that the economy as a whole was still suffering. As for the election, O'Reilly predicted the outcome will come down to the three head-to-head debates. 

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Bill O'Reilly duels Tavis Smiley over race and Norfolk mob attack

 

America's latest racial controversy got things heated on Thursday's "The O'Reilly Factor."

Host Bill O'Reilly debated guest Tavis Smiley over an alleged "mob attack" in Norfolk, Va., last month, when two white reporters said they were attacked by a group of blacks. The reporters work for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, which has drawn criticism for not publishing anything about the incident for two weeks. Police charged a teenager in connection with the case on Thursday.

O'Reilly prodded Smiley -- a PBS interviewer and co-author of the new book "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto" -- by arguing that the media would have reported immediately such an attack on a black couple.

"I don't know that," Smiley said. 

"You don't think they would cover that?" O'Reilly replied incredulously.

Smiley said another current racial controversy, the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin case, took weeks to get coverage, "but inside black America, it was being discussed every day."

"When we first heard about Trayvon Martin, we got on it," O'Reilly said of Fox News. "I can't acknowledge that [delay], because I don't know the timeline."

"Come on, this is the No-Spin Zone!" Smiley said, alluding to O'Reilly's famous slogan. "It's the white babies in this country who end up on the milk cartons."

What do you think? Are the media partly to blame for the racial controversies currently sweeping America?

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Sunday news shows skew too conservative, media group says

Do the Sunday news shows skew too far to the right? A new study by a media watchdog group says yes.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a New York-based liberal organization, says that NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS' "Face the Nation," ABC's "This Week" and "Fox News Sunday" are "failing miserably" at getting diverse guests.

"[F]rom June 2011 through February 2012, FAIR found a distinct conservative, white and male skew" on the shows. Eighty-six percent of the guests booked for one-on-one interviews were male and 92% were white, FAIR says. Of the guests who were identified as having a partisan affiliation, 70% were Republican.

"The Sunday morning shows are the showcase debate programs for the national news networks," FAIR's Peter Hart wrote in a statement. "It's a shame they aren't interested in having many actual debates."

In fairness, it should be pointed out that the period studied by FAIR coincided with an active GOP primary fight, which could explain the partisan skew. But FAIR says that a study in 2003--when Democrats were vying to defeat President George W. Bush--showed a conservative bias on the Sunday shows as well.

Officials with ABC and Fox News declined comment; a CBS spokeswoman could not locate someone to speak for attribution by deadline. An NBC representative did not return an email seeking comment.

What do you think of FAIR's claims?

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Photo: Sen. John McCain and former Sen. Fred Thompson (shown in January) are two GOP leaders who have appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press." Credit: William B. Plowman/NBC.

Fox Mole says legal threats are 'baseless' [updated]

The Fox Mole, former "O'Reilly Factor" associate producer Joe Muto, is out of a job at Fox News, but that doesn't mean his relationship with his former employer is completely over. If anything, it's just getting more interesting.

Following Muto's swift dismissal on Thursday (he was notified of his dismissal via hand-delivered letter), Fox News issued a legal threat to Gawker Media through attorneys at the law firm of Epstein Becker & Green, warning that the information Muto shared on Gawker was an admission of "likely criminal and civil wrongdoing on both his and Gawker's part, which will be the subject of further extensive investigation."

Gawker, for its part, thumbed its nose at the complaint by posting it in full, along with a photo of a much younger Bill O'Reilly posing with some bros and a topless woman. Just the kind of thing Fox News was asking to be removed from the site.

Muto declined to speak to The Times by phone, but did offer a statement, saying, "Fox's legal threats are completely baseless, and are an obvious attempt to intimidate me into silence."

Even though he was outed and fired this week, Muto had promised to share more tales of life within the Fox News organization on Gawker, which paid him a reported $5,000 for the series of posts that ended his career, according to Forbes.

Muto spent part of Thursday watching "The O'Reilly Factor" and tweeting about the final segment he wrote for the show: a sitcom-themed edition of the news quiz.

[Updated, 12:15 p.m. April 13: On Thursday, Muto received a letter similar to Gawker's letter from the firm of Epstein Becker & Green, representing Fox News, and obtained by Yahoo News, which instructed him to "immediately stop providing information and videos to Gawker that you unlawfully obtained while employed at Fox News, and return them to Fox News. You should immediately stop writing columns based on information that you unlawfully obtained while employed at Fox News."

They also asked Muto to preserve all documentation related to his employment by Gawker, which began while he was still an employee of Fox News.

In a statement, a Fox News representative said, "It's now in the hands of our lawyers and law enforcement since a crime has been committed."]

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Photo: Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilly Factor." Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

The short, notorious career of Gawker's Fox Mole comes to an end

This post has been corrected. See the note below for details.

The Fox Mole, who had a brief but spectacular two-day run on Gawker sharing tales of what it's like to work inside the Fox News network, has been outed and fired.

On Wednesday, "O'Reilly Factor" associate producer Joe Muto fessed up in a post on Gawker titled, "Hi Roger. It's me, Joe: The Fox Mole." In the post, he explained that yes, he was the guy who'd been writing dispatches from within the Fox News building and even though he had been found out by his superiors, he was still technically a News Corp. employee, suspended, but with pay.

That changed not long after, when News Corp. issued a statement which read, "Joe Muto has already been fired. Once the network determined that Mr. Muto was the main culprit in less than 24 hours, he was suspended late yesterday while we pursued concurrent avenues. We are continuing to explore legal recourse against Mr. Muto and possibly others."

In Muto's anonymously written posts, which began appearing on Gawker on Tuesday, he described the lousy working conditions of employees on the top-rated cable news network, posted interview footage of Mitt Romney and Sean Hannity not intended for air, and even took a photo of the revealing gap in the stalls in the men's room and the tasteful draping of toilet paper which he said was all that separated the common employee from Bill O'Reilly heeding nature's call.

Fox News claimed early on Wednesday that the mole had been identified, to which Muto responded with a post, "I am the Fox Mole, and I'm Still Here." That didn't last long. According to Muto's post, he was soon confronted by Dianne Brandi, the Fox News executive vice president of legal and business affairs, and sent packing.

Muto says it was his digital trail that gave him away. He used his log-in to access the videos which appeared on Gawker's website and since he was the only person to have accessed those videos in recent days, he was the first and only suspect.

Despite the threats of legal action and the fact that he's now out of a job, Muto seems to be taking his newfound notoriety in stride. He poked fun at himself and his carelessness on his Twitter feed, writing, "Who could have guessed that my bulletproof plan would go awry so quickly? Oh, that's right. EVERYONE." And took a picture of the letter, hand-delivered by Fox, which ended his employment.

Muto was an employee of Fox News beginning in 2004 and was with "The O'Reilly Factor" since 2007. Though he's no longer a Fox News employee, he promises much, much more to come.

For the record, 1:15 p.m. April 12: A previous version of this post stated Muto began with Fox News Channel in 2003. He began in 2004.

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Chris Wallace on his late father, Mike: 'He became my best friend'

Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Channel's "Fox News Sunday," was an infant when his parents divorced in 1948, and it wasn't until he was a teenager, following the death of an older brother, that he began to get to know his father, broadcast journalist Mike Wallace. The elder man eventually repaired the damage, and his son was grieving Monday.

Two days after the famed "60 Minutes" reporter died at age 93, Chris Wallace released a statement:

"My dad was everything you saw on television: fascinating and funny, challenging and exasperating.  He was the best reporter I have ever known.  And while work often came first for him, over the last 20 years, he worked hard to make connections with his family.  He became my best friend.  And at the end, he was surrounded by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  I already miss him terribly."

Chris Wallace, 64, has been with Fox since 2003 after lengthy stints at NBC News and ABC News.

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Photo: "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace and his father, Mike Wallace, during taping of the television show on Nov. 3, 2005.  Credit: AP / Fox News.

Geraldo Rivera sort of apologizes for Trayvon Martin hoodie remarks

Geraldo Rivera has apologized for putting part of the blame in Trayvon Martin's death on the Florida teenager's choice of clothing.

Rivera staked out his own little corner of the ever-widening Trayvon Martin controversy last week when he made comments on Fox News claiming that Martin's death at the hands of neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman was partly the fault of Martin's hoodie.

While appearing as "Fox and Friends" on Friday, Rivera said, "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was." He later explained: "I'll bet you money, if he didn't have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn't have responded in that violent and aggressive way."

After enduring his own wave of outrage, Geraldo has finally apologized. In his own way.

On Twitter on Monday, Rivera wrote, "Heard petition demands my apology to Trayvon's parents. Save effort: I deeply apologize for any hurt I caused-that is not my goal or intent."

But Rivera's famously outsized ego was not about to let him go down without a slap back at his critics. On Tuesday morning, Rivera clarified his apology in an email to Politico, writing, "I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my 'very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.'"

The blowback from Rivera's comment was immense and included the newsman's own son, who told him that he was "ashamed" of his stance on Martin and hoodies.

Over the weekend, wearing a hoodie became a shorthand way for many to commemorate the slain teenager who was shot to death while walking to the home of his father's girlfriend.

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Photo: Geraldo Rivera. Credit: Richard Drew / AP

Rosie O'Donnell cancellation: Donald Trump says 'Rosie fails at everything'

Rosie O'Donnell's OWN show came to a swift, inglorious end on Friday when it was canceled after just five months on the air. And O'Donnell's longtime media rival Donald Trump couldn't help but crow about the development on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" on Monday morning.

"Well, I always knew that Oprah was smart," Trump said via phone to co-host Steve Doocy. "Frankly, that was just going to happen. I knew it immediately as soon as they announced it. Rosie fails at everything. She had a variety show that failed.... Somebody else, some moron, will come and hire her again to do something else, and that will fail. At some point, let her rest. Let her go away."

Trump backed up his thoughts on his Twitter account on Monday, writing, "Rosie O'Donnell has failed again. Her ratings were abysmal and Oprah cancelled her on Friday night. When will media executives learn that Rosie just hasn't got it."

Trump and O'Donnell have quite a public history together, stretching all the way back to 2006, when O'Donnell, then a co-host on ABC's "The View," criticized Trump for using the scandal surrounding the controversial behavior of Miss USA Tara Conner as a way to publicize the pageant itself. Trump responded with a round of media appearances threatening to sue O'Donnell (though he never did).

The two have sparred over the years, with Trump's jabs being just the latest round. O'Donnell hasn't responded to Trump's latest comments, but she did retweet his online dis.

Meanwhile, Trump stopped short of criticizing Oprah on Fox News. When Doocy prompted Trump by mentioning OWN's chronically low ratings, Trump responded, "Well, I don't know. Oprah's a great friend of mine. I did one of her last shows, and I think she's a terrific person. I certainly disagreed with her hiring of Rosie, but Oprah's a terrific person."

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Late Night: Lewis Black slams media coverage of Whitney's death

On Wednesday night, "Daily Show" contributor Lewis Black unleashed an angry tirade against the sensationalistic coverage of Whitney Houston's untimely death. "As with past celebrity deaths, the media observed her passing in the tradition of the Native Americans -- by using every part of the tragedy," he observed. "For instance, did you know with very little skill you can turn a song catalog into hours of terrible segues?”

As evidence, Black presented a montage of news anchors making awkward references to Houston's work. (Sample: "Chances are we wouldn't have to be remembering her soundtrack from 'The Bodyguard,' if only she'd guarded her own body better.")

"Can we cool it with the wordplay?" he asked, getting more and more agitated. "When Cronkite announced the death of JFK, it wasn’t with a clever ‘Ask not, who got shot in Dallas today!'"

Black directed his harshest attack at "CNN's resident hearse-chaser" Nancy Grace, who has repeatedly suggested that Houston might be a victim of foul play, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.  “Of course! She was pushed underwater!" Black replied sarcastically. "It’s the only possible explanation for someone dying after years of drug addiction!"

He even compared Grace unfavorably to bodies at the medical examiner's office: "I've been to a morgue. You know what's nice about it? In a morgue everyone who's had their brains removed, keeps their mouths shut."

Black also ripped Fox News personality Eric Bolling, who urged Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters to "step away from the crack pipe" after she expressed interest in leading the House Committee on Financial Services. “Well, there you have it!" he said. "A beloved pop icon’s death used to criticize the Democrats’ choice for the banking committee!”

Black suggested that Bolling could do more to politicize Houston's death: "Why stop there? Whitney probably wouldn't have had all those prescription drugs if not for Obamacare." 

 

 

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Photo: Lewis Black. Credit: Paul Hawthorne / Getty Images.

Fox News marks a decade on top

Love it or hate it, Fox News has some staying power.

In January 2002, Fox News Channel surpassed CNN as the No. 1 cable news network. At the time, it was considered a fluke and most industry observers figured CNN would be back on top in no time.

That turned out to not be the case, as Fox News has just finished up its 10th straight year on top.

During that time, News Corp.'s Fox News has almost doubled its prime-time audience. In January 2002, it was averaging just over a million viewers. Now it is averaging 1.9 million viewers. Time Warner's CNN is averaging 841,000 viewers in prime time, and Comcast's MSNBC has 801,000 viewers.

"America has clearly embraced fair and balanced news,” said Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.

The cable channel has also turned into a cash cow for News Corp., with a value that some industry analysts have put at north of $10 billion.

— Joe Flint

Photo: Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. Credit: Fox News.

Muppets vs. Fox News round 2: Miss Piggy says Fox News isn't news [Video]

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

The Muppets are finally striking back against a Fox Business Network report in December that questioned whether the Jim Henson creations were brainwashing children with their liberal agenda.

At a press conference for their film "The Muppets" in London, Kermit and Miss Piggy finally had a chance to address the attack to reporters in person.

One reporter asked Kermit, "I've got to ask you how you felt when — I think it was Eric Bolling from Fox News said it was pushing a dangerous liberal agenda and trying to brainwash children."

PHOTOS: Kermit the Frog's crazy career in pictures

Bolling's guest Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center had taken the Muppets to task for portraying a rich oil magnate (named Tex Richman) as the villain in their film and asking why, just once, oil businessmen couldn't be portrayed as valuable, upstanding members of society.

Kermit, in his traditionally tactful manner did his best to defuse the Fox News situation, replying, "I can tell you that's categorically not true. And besides, if we had a problem with oil companies, why would we have spent the entire film driving around in a gas-guzzling Rolls Royce?"

But Miss Piggy wasn't having it. "It's almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as, you know, being news," she said to great applause from the assembled journalists.

"Boy, that's gonna be all over the Internet. You are in such deep water," Kermit said.

Piggy, ever the blunt assessor of any situation responded, "Yeah. Yeah, if they take what I say seriously, they've got a real big problem."

Eric Bolling, the ball is now in your court.

[For the record, 11:15 a.m. Jan. 31: A previous version of this post stated that the report was on Fox News. It was on Fox Business Network. The post also stated that the comments about oil businessmen were made by Eric Bolling. They were made by Bolling's guest, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center.

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Photo: Miss Piggy. Credit: Scott Garfield / Disney.

Was Fox News too tough on Mitt Romney?

Mitt Romney is evidently not happy about his recent sit-down with Fox News.

The GOP presidential candidate felt the network's approach was "overly aggressive" and "uncalled-for," according to Bret Baier, who conducted the Tuesday interview.

Baier asked Romney about his reputation for flip-flopping on key issues, such as immigration and abortion. The candidate replied icily that Baier had his facts wrong and then changed the subject to talk about President Obama's record.

Was Fox News too tough on Romney? Judge for yourself here:

 

The reaction is already complicating Romney's efforts to paint himself as the GOP frontrunner. On Twitter, wags are filling a feed with the hashtag #QuestionsMittLikes. Among them: "Truffles or caviar?" "Vanilla or French vanilla?" 

It's not as if Romney hasn't had a lot of practice swatting the flip-flopping charge in previous interviews. Here's a 2007 clip when he faced much the same question, with much the same result:

 

So, what do you think? Is Romney justified in complaining about his treatment on Fox News?

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