Bill O'Reilly (pundit)

Bill O'Reilly is a former tabloid TV host turned Fox News Channel host, and a self-proclaimed political "independent". O'Reilly hosts the top rated cable news show, The O'Reilly Factor. He also hosts a radio program syndicated by Westwood One[?] called The Radio Factor.

O'Reilly ends each episode of The Factor by reading mail sent in by viewers. His mail is equally divided between viewers that like him and viewers that hate him. Some think he is a Democrat and others think he is a Republican.

He has a host of varying viewpoints, some liberal, some conservative, and some libertarian. He's against the death penalty and believes global warming is real, and he's for a strong military and troops on the U.S. border with Mexico and cutting taxes across the board. A viewer once wrote to give O'Reilly a rough statistical analysis of his political viewpoints and found O'Reilly to take more conservative viewpoints roughly 60% of the time, more liberal viewpoints 30% of the time, and completely moderate viewpoints 10% of the time.

In his book, The O'Reilly Factor, he answered the question of his political affiliation this way: "You might be wondering if whether I'm conservative, liberal, libertarian, or exactly what... See, I don't want to fit any of those labels, because I believe that the truth doesn't have labels. When I see corruption, I try to expose it. When I see exploitation, I try to fight it. That's my political position."

When his show and the Fox News Channel were first rising in popularity, O'Reilly portrayed himself as something of a populist[?] and media outsider, fighting for the people against the moneyed elite, such as powerful politicians and corporate and media bigwigs. However, in a twist of irony, the tremendous successes of his show and his books have made him a millionaire himself who wields considerable power. Nevertheless, he emphasizes his small-town upbringing in Levittown, New York and prides himself on being a tough interviewer.

While he tends to disagree with everyone on some point and turns some people away from his show with his brash attitude, he has attracted millions of viewers with his confrontational interviews and decrees on his show that it is a "no spin zone" and that "the spin stops here."

Books

• Those Who Trespass (ISBN 0963124684)
• The O'Reilly Factor (ISBN 0767905288)
• The No-Spin Zone (ISBN 0767908481)

External Links

• The O'Reilly Factor website (http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/)
• Bill O'Reilly's personal website (http://www.billoreilly.com/)
• O'Reilly's column in the New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/oreilly/)