Fresh Air dust-up with Gross riles O’Reilly
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly added another chapter to his feud with public broadcasting Oct. 8 [2003], aborting a Fresh Air interview that he called “a hatchet job.”
O’Reilly had gone on the show to promote his new book, Who’s Looking Out For You?, but exploded when Gross tried to read a People magazine review criticizing him. Earlier in the interview, Gross had asked O’Reilly to respond to harsh words from the New York Times and lefty humorist Al Franken.
“You know, I came on this program to talk about Who’s Looking Out For You? and what you have done is throw every kind of defamation you can in my face,” he said. He then asked Gross if she had been as tough on Franken, who had appeared on Fresh Air a month earlier.
Gross conceded she was easier on Franken. “Al Franken had written a book of political satire,” she explained, somewhat meekly. Shortly thereafter, O’Reilly declared the interview over and left the microphone in his New York studio. The resulting interview was about 40 minutes. In a postscript, Gross read the People excerpt.
The flare-up titillated political observers across the country, and the interview became one of NPR’s most e-mailed segments. Listeners to a version on O’Reilly’s website overtaxed its servers.
Last year, O’Reilly twice used his show to rail against NPR for not inviting him to discuss his best-selling books. But the night after appearing on Fresh Air, he told his Fox audience that he had resisted going on the show, knowing “NPR would try to smash me,” but agreed after encouragement from his publisher.
“I should have known better,” he said.
He then claimed CPB gets “a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money”—it received about $360 million in fiscal year 2003—and interviewed Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who told him, “Frankly, a lot of us [in Congress] are hoping we can sort of tailor down the funding for NPR.”
In addition to his previous gripes with NPR, O’Reilly had taken on public television’s Bill Moyers, who retaliated with a lengthy rebuttal.
Some who heard the Fresh Air interview said the confrontational Fox host couldn’t take his own medicine. But others, including NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, faulted Gross as well.
“It was a bad interview,” Dvorkin says. “It sounded like she was carrying Al Franken’s water, and to a lot of listeners who felt that she tried to hoist [O’Reilly] on his own petard and it didn’t work.” Leading with the criticism from the Times and Franken put O’Reilly on the defensive and kept him from opening up, he says.
Dvorkin received “several hundred” e-mails about the interview, most critical of Gross. Some seemed prompted by O’Reilly, he says, but others came from regular Fresh Air listeners.
“Terry needs to apologize to Bill for that interview,” read one e-mail that Dvorkin quoted in a column on NPR’s website. “She’s a much better interviewer than what I just heard from her.”
Dvorkin also says Gross should not have read the People excerpt after O’Reilly
left, denying him the right to respond. Such an “empty chair”
interview is unethical, he says.
“Terry was tough on O’Reilly, not unfair,” responded Danny
Miller, Fresh Air’s e.p., in Dvorkin’s column. “And
I think O’Reilly drove the interview directly towards the conclusion
he was hoping for. He was looking to butt heads.”
Posted Nov. 3, 2003
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