Oprah's Town Hall
The Oprah Winfrey Show | October 27, 2006
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Is the media trustworthy? In the Oprah show Truth in America, Frank Rich said television news was all about ratings. Does Bill think we get truth from the media? Bill: No. I hate the media. Oprah: You are media! Bill: I am the media and I don't like my[self]—no. I won't talk to the print press because I'll never get quoted accurately and they'll always take cheap shots. And I know I sound like I'm whining, but I'm not. It's just the truth. I stay away from them. I believe you [Oprah] stay away from most of them. They're just untrustworthy. What's happened in America is we have hyper-partisans now. We've divided, as many of you pointed out, we've divided the country into red states, blue states. The newspapers take a very, very strong position—although the Chicago Tribune is an exception, I like that paper—they're either very liberal or very conservative, mostly very liberal. And television news, they're a bunch of phonies. They really are. I know all these people. They're in makeup three hours ... and they read what's put in front of them. And they're politically correct. I call it "cocktail party cred." So if you're pro-life, for example, you can't exist in network news if you're pro-life. You'll never get invited to a party. You'll be ostracized. Can you imagine if you worked for Frank Rich's employer The New York Times, and you went into work tomorrow and said, "Hey, you know, that Bill O'Reilly, he's got a hell of a show. I like that guy." Nobody'd talk to you! |
