6.07.2008

Video: O'Reilly Factor ambush on Moyers backfires in Minneapolis

One of the worst kept secrets at this weekend's National Conference for Media Reform at the Minneapolis Convention Center is that Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show sent a crew to record the "real nuts" who are advocating for changes in the media -- "the furthest left people in the face of America," according to O'Reilly. He promises to show footage on Monday of what the crew captured. O'Reilly's teaser suggests it'll be anything but "fair and balanced." On his show he said, "I gotta tell you, these people are crazy."

Noah Kunin from The UpTake has been tracking the crew all weekend as they've been trying to compile footage for Monday's piece. He was there when a producer from The O'Reilly Factor ambushed Bill Moyers after his talk Saturday morning -- or, more accurately, tried to ambush him.

Moyers, uncowed, turned the table on the under-gunned producer, inviting him to appear on next Friday's show. "If you can't come on my show, send somebody below you. Send Bill O'Reilly," he said. "Bill is not a journalist, he's a pugilist."

The indignant producers persisted in his questioning of Moyers, but the PBS mainstay fired back, with a kinder approach. "I like to honor the people who do the real work in journalism; that's the producers and reporters," he said. "It isn't anchors. It isn't blowhards."

The producer's feeble comback to Moyers' anchors-and-blowhard dig: "That's you."

Look for more on this altercation from The UpTake and the American News Project's Davin Hutchins who appears at the end of Kunin's footage.

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