http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/01/29/oreilly050129.html
A commentary from the Toronto Star reads as such:
Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has lashed out at a CBC documentary featuring guests who were highly critical of his show.
"Vicious attack on Fox News by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, totally out of any kind of bounds," said O'Reilly in his response Friday night to the Fifth Estate broadcast on Jan. 26. "How low will they go? We'll show you the tape and you won't believe it!" was another response found on the Fox News website.
The Fifth Estate's website says the documentary examines the "war of words that's pitting conservative against liberal." "It's loud, it's raucous, but does it have anything to do with the truth?" the site asks about the new kind of hard-hitting political debate on U.S. television. Journalists, media watchers and other talk show hosts in the documentary took aim at the O'Reilly Factor and show's relationship with the truth.
In turn, the host had two guests on his show who agreed with him about the CBC.
"The Canadian government gives them a billion dollars to put this sort of stuff on the air, and the Canadian government is really at fault here, isn't it?" O'Reilly said to one guest. "You scare the hell out of them, Bill," the guest answered.
CBC refused an invitation to appear on O'Reilly's show Friday night, and O'Reilly refused to be interviewed for the Fifth Estate broadcast.
In the past, O'Reilly has called the CBC radically to the left, the Globe and Mail a "far-left newspaper," and Canadian health care "socialist."
He and his conservative colleagues say they're doing journalism that is fair and balanced.
The Fox News Channel is the highest-rated news network in the United States. It is now widely available in Canada through cable and satellite services.
A commentary from the Toronto Star reads as such:
The U.S. is at war, the Iraqis were voting, social security reform is a huge issue and this guy devotes precious TV time to denouncing Canada, Canadians and CBC, repeating the same tired and untrue lines about how Fox had been "banned" here.
Ever since Fox landed on the cable dial here late last year Roger's free digital preview ends in mid-March I have been mesmerized by how often O'Reilly accuses guests of not supporting the troops or being anti-American, making up factoids to suit his view of the world. For example, he once cited the "Paris Business Review," an economic journal that doesn't exist, to bolster his case that the right wing-led boycott of French goods over its anti-Iraq war stance had cost France billions even though the value of American imports from there increased in 2002-2003.
Among the untruths allowed to stand on Fox on Friday night:
- Fox is seen "in about seven million or eight million homes" in Canada, said O'Reilly.
Not true. Not even close. There are 7.2 million homes total in Canada with basic cable. Rogers boasts about 675,000 digital households. Many cable and satellite services don't even carry Fox.
- The CBC "has enjoyed something like a monopoly on news coverage and commentary up until now, and true diversity is now arriving in broadcasting."
This from Carl Hodge, billed as a professor of "political sciene" (sic) at B.C.'s Okanagan University College. Hasn't he noticed that CTV, Global and Chum have all been doing TV news for some time now?