(Bill O’Reilly and Dan Patrick)
On May 10 the Chronicle ran an editorial that we dismissed as more of the usual nonsense.
Bill O’Reilly, however, picked up on the editorial (which was posted on May 10, but apparently has been edited in a non-transparent manner, since the date is now May 12 — sad, since it still contains one glaring usage error — See UPDATE 2 below), and blasted away at it on his television program.
Unfortunately, O’Reilly apparently read something else entirely on the air, attributing it to the Chronicle editorial, which prompted editorial page editor James Howard Gibbons to post a rebuttal today.
KSEV-700 substitute host David Benzion provided a fairly good “Fisking” of the thin-skinned editorialist’s rebuttal on the air earlier, and focused on the following:
The editorial, citing extensive research on this subject….
The original editorial, as Benzion properly pointed out, provided no citations to research; the version of that editorial now carrying a May 12 date provides no citations to research either. (We’ll try to track down a paper copy to see what, if anything, was changed from May 10 to May 12. — See UPDATE 2 below)
Tonight, Bill O’Reilly invited KSEV’s Dan Patrick on his television program to talk about the Chronicle, since the newspaper declined to send a representative to the show. Banjo Jones summed up the appearance as follows:
Bill O’Reilly is a buffoon, as he and his staff proved the other night when it entirely misquoted a Houston Chronicle editorial regarding how Florida is dealing with child killers.
The Houston Chronicle, on the other hand, is wussified, as it proved tonight when it declined to send someone on O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel program.
“The Chronicle is afraid,” O’Reilly crowed.
Then he introduced Dan Patrick, the Houston-based radio talk show buffoon, who happily lambasted the Houston Chronicle as a liberally biased newspaper that has been hijacked by out-of-state liberals who have been brought in to run the business.
Banjo’s full account is pretty funny.
Sadly, the circus is sort of overshadowing the sorts of problems at the newspaper that we document regularly here, which aren’t funny at all.
UPDATE (05-13-2005): Another interesting aspect of the editorial board’s criticism of the Florida law is that the editorial board has recently been critical of Republicans in a number of instances when, they allege, Republican politicians have been guilty of usurping local control. How amusing, then, that editorialists in Houston want to tell Florida’s lawmakers what they are doing wrong!
UPDATE 2 (05-13-2005): Thanks to the readers who sent paper and electronic copy of the original editorial. So far as I can tell, no changes were made in the text. My best guess is that an online editor opened the editorials in the Chron’s content management system — perhaps to keep them from rolling to the archives — and that “edit” caused the date/time stamp to update.
UPDATE 3 (05-13-2005): A little birdie tells us that Bill O’Reilly is about to be displaced on KSEV…. by Dr. Laura Schlesinger, as soon as Monday. Nobody at KSEV will confirm for us, so I guess we’ll just have to listen.
UPDATE (05-16-2005): I just flipped over to to the KSEV stream, and O’Reilly was still there. That just goes to show that you can’t believe every rumor you hear.
UPDATE (05-17-2005): A blogHOUSTON reader points out that the KSEV website now shows Dr. Laura in O’Reilly’s old slot on the schedule, which was not the case when I checked yesterday. O’Reilly was still on the air today, but it appears that the KSEV web guy is either very erratic or that the change is coming shortly.
