As the Washington Post reports, late last month, O'Reilly's show accidentally played a quote which said more than the host intended to. Apparently, O'Reilly had only planned to discuss part of the quote by 9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean--the part which said "there were contacts between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, excuse me, al-Qaeda." Unfortunately, the other half of Kean's quote was played, too:
There is no evidence that we can find whatsoever that Iraq or Saddam Hussein participated in any way in attacks on the United States -- in other words, on 9/11.It was played, yes, but the whole quote never made it to air on Fox News because O'Reilly complained that it was the wrong quote and retaped his commentary.
By all appearances, Bill O'Reilly wanted to use Kean's legitmate authority to rag against the New York Times' contention that there were no links between Iraq and al Qaeda, but he didn't want the same quote to be aired by that dignitary if the whole thing undermined the Iraq-was-involved-in-911 meme. So he trashed the soundbite and paraphrased the part of Kean's quote that he wanted to use. He selectively edited the quote to push his thesis.
Later on the show, O'Reilly interviewed Georgetown law professor David Cole who called him on the edit. Since the "The O'Reilly Factor" edited out Cole's confrontation, viewers had no idea that his charge was leveled or how O'Reilly reacted to it. All viewers saw was O'Reilly saying, "We make mistakes because we bring in people who are trying to cause trouble. I thought he was a rational person." So O'Reilly can pretend the segment was edited because of something inappropriate the guest did. And he can sound apologetic about it.
The response no one saw: O'Reilly called the Cole an SOB and kicked him off the show mid-interview and told him he wouldn't be invited back.
Bad guest then? No, just O'Reilly getting called on his own spin. And apparently, one of the rules of O'Reilly's No Spin Zone is never call the host on his own spin.
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