The ongoing feud between Media Matters for America and Bill O’Reilly continues with a segment yesterday on blogs, where O’Reilly accuses MM of being George Soros-funded assassins. Interestingly, Portland was mentioned, as the location of one of the guests for the segment, a David Kline, author of the newly-released Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture. Kline made one point about how pre-WWII media didn’t have the veneer of non-partisanship that may have existed “before the advent of corporate media” (presumably between the red-baiting of the 1950s and the Reagan-pimping of the 1980s). Kline’s bio on Amazon says he’s been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, with many major magazine credits, but you have to wonder about his honesty when he’s involved in exchanges like this:
O’REILLY: Absolutely valid, excellent point. But here’s the problem: these people are so vicious, and they — the media is so corrupt in taking their uncorroborated, as Mr. Babbin pointed out — defamation that most people now won’t run for office, sir. They won’t do television and radio commentary. They won’t put the — when we had to book this segment, I couldn’t get people to come on and say what you guys are saying, because they were afraid that Media Matters would go after them. They — I couldn’t — I had people turn down this segment — a bunch of them — what are you, crazy? I’m going to criticize these assassins? They’ll come after me. And that’s a chilling effect.
KLINE: Well, I’m not naming names here, right? I mean, I don’t want to get stalked.
But, whatever you gotta do to try to sell copies of the book, I guess. Like O’Reilly’s viewers can read.