The Radio Factor

Bill O'Reilly has a radio show? Really? Oh well here it goes.

It starts out with a couple of talking points. It is followed by recent news. This is what grossly offended me. O'Reilly blatantly went on the offense against Hellen Thomas for asking questions about whether or not our military was killing innocent civilians. He then defends Don Imus and discusses whether or not he deserves a second chance. I surprisingly agreed with him and believe he had some well put points about Don Imus's past as a shock jock and how he truly did not go out to hurt the Rutger's Woman's basketball team. He lost me however when he talked about how the NY Times and the Washington Post are destroying the country. I found this very ironic seeing as the radio (which this was on) and the newspaper are both versions of old media trying very hard to remain in the game, and this seemed like a shot at newspapers in general.

The show then goes into it's main topic of the night....forgiveness. I was truly surprised before hand that the show would be on this. One of the main principals of Christianity is forgiveness, but this seems to have escaped many neo-cons so it was a nice gust of wind to know that it is still there somewhere. They then had an expert on religion come onto the show and discuss forgiveness from the standards of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This was my favorite part of the show and I actually enjoyed it until Bill started taking calls from his viewers. I was overly agitated as he said he believed he was put here by god to protect people and then when somebody showed him up on religion he backed off by saying it wasn't his side to argue on a post-life. Bill then gave signed copies of his books to all of his callers and a few of his emails ( trying to be a bit like Oprah, Bill?).

The show ends with Bill talking to a person who was a scholar on the Jewish faith. The caller argued against the religion expert and this was easily one of my favorite parts of the show. Bill plugged his book and his upcoming tv episode with Al Franken then signed off.

Now, as I have stated previously in past posts, I am not a fan of Fox News. I guess in turn that makes me not a fan of Bill O'Reilly (or as Al Franken calls him Bill O'Lielly). That being said however, I was more than impressed with his taking on of a hard hitting topic such as religion and forgiveness coexisting in the world. While I did not agree with many of his arguments, I actually enjoyed listening to the show which can now be found on a podcast through Itunes. I doubt that I would actually listen again, but I left with a bit more respect for Bill O'Reilly.

FoxNN

Fox News : Noone Covers Politics like Fox News
Ron Paul support in NH
House Page Program
NASA and Atlantis
Richardson and New Mexico voters
5 worst blunder on 08 campaigns. (audio cut) 4 republican 1 Hilary
Landowners on Mexican Border Wall (phrasing done poor about drug smugglers)
Clinton Family Dinner in Iowa


CNN: The Best Political Team in the Nation
Jenna Bush calls family on Ellen Degeneres (funny)
Mccrery not running again, 17 other republicans stepping down from House
Magna Carta up for auction
Huckabee at 39% in Iowa in one poll, tied in others
Clinton family dinner in Iowa

Above is the stories for Both Fox News and CNN Headline News at approximately 3 pm on Saturday, December 8th. As you can see, in the time slots which I watched, the majority of the information shown on both channels was different, with the exception of course being Hilary Clinton eating dinner with her family on the campaign trail (shocking I know). I will go on record as saying that I am not particularly fond of Fox News and believe that their brand of "journalism" is very biased as they seem to be the new talking heads for the bush administration.

That having been said, my thoughts were soon justified as Fox showed a great deal of small mush pieces in between their hard hitting stories (Ron Paul in NH and the White House Paige debacle). This was soon followed by two commercial breaks within 50 seconds of each other after an audio problem occured with a man discussing campaign slips for the candidates. On the other side, Cnn disappointed me. I was hoping for a bit more hard hitting news, and instead got a decent size piece on Ellen Degeneres and Jenna Bush talking to the President on the phone. Hours before that happened, the President gave a speech on Iraq which supposedly answered some lingering questions, but this wasn't even touched upon. When Hilary Clinton showed up on the screen eating with her family in Iowa, i threw a shoe at the television and turned it off. While Fox News was not produced very well (grainy footage and audio difficulties) CNN had crisp pictures and seemed to be more in touch with the public. Although Fox lost this battle quite easily, I am still a much bigger fan of CNN, I just personally wish both would cover harder hitting stories in their afternoon programming.

Half an hour later I turned Fox News back on just to check out what was showing. It was a female reporter bashing Democrats on a bill in the house. There is never two sides to an argument I guess. Fox News coined the phrase "fair and balanced" as part of their slogan, yet they seem to be "unorganized and unbalanced". I have yet to turn CNN back on after showing Hilary's dinner plans.