AMBUSH IRONY…. Clearly, the most hilarious part of this is the fact that Bill O’Reilly has no idea why this is amusing.
After the Wednesday edition of the O’Reilly Factor, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly complained on his daily “O’Reilly Factor Post Game Show” that, in his view, today’s technology means “we don’t have any privacy at all.” He warned his viewers, “Somewhere along in your life, somebody is going to come up and start snapping pictures of you. If you can, avoid that.”
It’s touching to hear O’Reilly express concern for privacy rights. If only he would practice what he preaches, O’Reilly might even have credibility on the subject.
When Bill O’Reilly’s camera crew ambushed Mike Hoyt at a bus stop in Teaneck, N.J., a few months ago, the on-camera confrontation and the microphone in his face reminded him, oddly enough, of the “60 Minutes” interviewer Mike Wallace.
Mr. Hoyt, executive editor of The Columbia Journalism Review, was well-versed in the venerable art of the on-camera, on-the-street confrontation, perfected by Mr. Wallace and other hard-charging television journalists in decades past. Now, in an appropriation of Mr. Wallace’s techniques, ambush interviews have become a distinguishing feature of Mr. O’Reilly’s program on the Fox News Channel.
Mr. Hoyt, one of more than 50 people that Mr. O’Reilly’s young producers have confronted in the past three years, said the interviews were “really just an attempt to make you look bad.” In almost every case Mr. O’Reilly uses the aggressive interviews to campaign for his point of view.
Mr. O’Reilly, the right-leaning commentator who has had the highest-rated cable show for about eight years, has called the interviews a way to hold people accountable for their actions. “When the bad guys won’t comment, when they run and hide, we will find them,” he said on “The O’Reilly Factor” recently.
If you can, avoid O’Reilly and his ambush attackers.
