Newsday's Verne Gay is about to get slimed by the Liberal Attack Machine. The Cable Gamer has no inside sources, but by the pricking of her thumbs, she knows that if Gay starts telling the truth about Media Matters, MM will, in return, start lying about Gay.
Here's the best of it:
Today, I defend Bill.
This is a highly amusing act, because O'Reilly has attacked me on the air a couple of times. He once called me a "left-wing journalist with an agenda..." I loved that
best of all, for it was so joyously, ludicrously wide of the mark. He used to refer to me as "that guy" too. He couldn't bring himself to call me by name.
But this isn't about me. It's about Bill. He was attacked by a self-described "progressive" media "watch-dog" site called Media Matters. Apparently these people at MM have nothing better to do than spend their days and nights looking for conservative bias in the media, and now - are you ready for this? - they've come after Newsday.
Newsday!
TCG will interpolate here: Newsday is a terrific newspaper, with great coverage of Long Island, but like most MSM papers, it leans left. So for MM to attack it, well, that just shows how far over MM really is.
And by direct association, me, whose byline was on that article.
This time, I'm actually on this guy's side.
That is to say, Gay is defending O'Reilly against MMM--Media Matters Mud. Now back to Gay:
Here's what MM posted on their site: "The headline of a Newsday article on Bill O'Reilly's controversial remarks about a Harlem restaurant run by African-Americans asserted, 'O'Reilly lashes out at CNN over misquoted report,' but the article provided no examples of a 'misquot[ation],' nor did it quote O'Reilly claiming to have been 'misquoted.' The article also stated that 'Mediamatters.org released a partial transcript' of O'Reilly's comments. In fact, Media Matters provided the relevant transcript and audio clip of O'Reilly's remarks, which included the full context of his statements."
Now, let me give you a little lesson in journalism, Media Matters Person. When you quote someone out of context - as you did - it's the same as misquoting them. You may as well make up their words, because the import is the same - a disingenuous conveyance of information that had no bearing on the speaker's intent.
Second, let me take issue with the weasel word "relevant." In fact, it WAS a partial transcript, both print and audio. The print transcript that MM has on its website is in fact HEAVILY redacted, and the audio - or at least the audio posted Tuesday when this whole thing exploded - was only a small portion of a conversation that lasted an hour.
What did Bill say?
Here's my own transcript of the conversation and any mistakes are mine alone. There are many small elisions here and there, but I've tried to be faithful to the general tone, tenor and context of the conversation. (This is about eighteen minutes of the full hour - the RELEVANT eighteen minutes.)
My summation: It's O'Reilly’s standard-issue anti-rap diatribe. I've heard it before, and so have you. And if he’s guilty of anything here, it's of being a flat-footed white guy with a tin ear. But he's always been guilty of that, so what else is new? The comments about Sylvia’s were – of course – silly but part of a much broader context which I think renders them harmless.
Verne, you're a brave man for writing all this. I pray that you will survive the MM counter-attack, because it's coming!
