*******QUOTE*******
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6417561&pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1092366637875&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847.... ...O'Reilly's poor impulse control is precisely what makes him so valuable to Fox News Channel. According to Rushkoff, O'Reilly's
appeal to anger, emotion and opinion are not merely ratings-grabbing devices; they are part of a larger program of ideological coercion. "As the
conservative-message machine geared up in the 1970s," says Rushkoff, "its
strategy was to make the political landscape more emotional and less factual - galvanizing a new base of conservative support around hot-button issues. That's why Fox tries to
replace news with opinion." ....
O'reilly comes by his anger honestly. Born in New York on September 10th, 1949, the eldest of two children of William and Angela O'Reilly, he was physically and verbally bullied by his
father, William Sr. An imposing six-foot-three ex-naval officer, William Sr. was
a frustrated, thwarted man who, despite becoming an accountant at a large oil company, felt he never reached his full potential, even after he bought a house and moved his family to the tranquil middle-class suburb of Westbury, on Long Island, when Bill Jr. was a year old. "He'd get into a fight at the drop of a hat," says an elderly Westbury neighbor who recalls William's hair-trigger temper. O'Reilly says his father took out his frustrations on his son, whom he yelled at for minor offenses and even at times punched in the arm. "There were times when my heart was black with the urge for revenge," O'Reilly has written about his late father. ....
But the picture that emerges of O'Reilly from talking to former colleagues at WFAA is very different. They accuse him of lifting stories from the newspaper and undermining newsroom colleagues. "In a business where there are a lot of reprehensible people," says longtime WFAA reporter Byron Harris, "he stood out as particularly dishonest, obnoxious, self-centered." ....
But Cullinan was sometimes troubled by his mentor's approach. "I helped him produce some stories," he says.
"He would write the story before he did the interviews. Then he'd get the person to say what fit with his narrative." ....
After a year, O'Reilly got his big break, becoming a CBS network correspondent, filing stories for the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather. It didn't take long before controversy found him again. In June 1982, he was sent to CBS' bureau in Buenos Aires during the Falkland Islands war. Shortly after arriving, O'Reilly went to cover a story about a crowd of angry Argentines who had gathered in the streets. He was convinced he'd landed a scoop that would put him in a prominent spot on the evening news. But his bosses gave the story to CBS' star correspondent in Buenos Aires,
Bob Schieffer -- a classic case of "big-footing," which one member of the bureau points out is "normal for young reporters. That's just part of TV news." But O'Reilly wouldn't stand for it. He reportedly threw a tantrum with his bosses in Buenos Aires and had an
ugly confrontation with Schieffer. Within days of arriving, O'Reilly was kicked out of the bureau. "They literally sent him home," recalls one of the team members. ....
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