O’Reilly-NBC War Heats Up

The war of words between Bill O’Reilly and NBC is getting nastier.

Bill O’Reilly has now charged that "NBC News has gone sharply to the left.”

The Fox News host recently told his radio audience: "They are an activist network now. They hate Bush across the board.” And O’Reilly told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell during an early January interview: "I’ll admit it. I don’t like you guys.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough responded on his show: "Why does Bill O’Reilly hate NBC so much?”

Scarborough, a conservative former Republican congressman, also said, "I certainly took offense when he said there were no conservatives at the network; we were all liberal stooges and Marxist sympathizers.”

He added in an interview that O’Reilly "really does toe the party line more than I ever have.”

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, writing about the ongoing feud, observed: "Beyond the name calling . . . is a serious debate about the Iraq war and the nature of media bias. But the cantankerous talking heads are also showmen who know that a bench-clearing brawl can be good for ratings.”

He called the O’Reilly-NBC feud "mean-spirited and incredibly entertaining.”

According to Scarborough, O’Reilly’s animosity toward NBC is largely fueled by his dislike of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who faces off with the "O’Reilly Factor” at 8 p.m. and has been gaining in the ratings.

Olbermann’s show "Countdown” was up 60 percent in the fourth quarter compared to a year earlier, although with 656,000 viewers, it still lags well behind O’Reilly’s show, with 2.04 million viewers.

Olbermann has often bestowed his "Worst Person in the World” award on O’Reilly.

"Several times over the last year, according to three sources who asked not to be identified . . . O’Reilly’s agent called Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC’s television group, urging him to tell his MSNBC commentators to back off,” Kurtz disclosed.

Olbermann said in an interview that O’Reilly latest assault on NBC "reeks a little bit of an attempt to get some attention.”

O’Reilly for his part refuses to mention Olbermann by name. But he did say that "an NBC commentator” had stated that "President Bush is allowing Americans to be killed in Iraq for money and other insane stuff. Unbelievable.”