O'Reilly Irritates the Blogosphere
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly is whining about the internet. As usual, it's all about him. Somebody somehow erroneously reported that some radio station dumped his show. Nobody would have known without O'Reilly screeching about it, of course. It wouldn't matter to anybody except that now this is the occasion for him to fulminate about how awful it is for a medium to exist that allows people to speak without their words being screened by a corporate editor. This, from a person who brags constantly about how the great Himself cannot be controlled by the "mainstream media," and how great that unfettered competition has been for America. On that point, he may be right. But when this freedom trickles down the food chain to people like Matt Drudge and a million other people, and somebody occasionally has the temerity to do to O'Reilly what he gleefully does to the broadcast networks and CNN, suddenly the internet is the end of civilization. That sounds pretty much like what the major media have said about Fox News, doesn't it? I have enjoyed O'Reilly's bombastic style and often intelligent treatment of issues, but he's losing his perspective. Equating a fairly technical mistake about his radio show (which is in fact not doing well here in the Chicago area) with child pornography and using that false equation to lambaste the entire internet is, itself, irresponsible, and I wonder where his editor is.

The internet is making it possible for people to connect with each other who in the past would probably never have known of each other's existence. The impact of blogs and other internet publications on politics is enormous and overwhelmingly positive. Three refutations of O'Reilly's screed can be found at Lileks, Instapundit, and The Volokh Conspiracy.

And that's the memo.