The Big Giant Head touts his show as the "No Spin Zone." Apparently no spin means resorting to name-calling every 7 seconds. Indiana University media researchers went through the torturous exercise of actually watching The O'Reilly Factor for six months to see exactly how O'Reilly filled in his daily hour of airtime. Their conclusions?
The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.
"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."[..]
Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.
The scariest notion? That according to the 2005 Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, 40 percent of respondents considered O'Reilly to be a journalist.
O'Reilly's pathetic response? It's all George Soros's fault. No, seriously.
