Thread: How long will Bill O’Reilly keep after Virginia Beach Mayor?

How long will Bill O’Reilly keep after Virginia Beach and its Mayor?

The belittling of Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf is not surprising to those who keep track of Bill O’Reilly’s polemic techniques. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO


By TONY GERMANOTTA, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 14, 2007



WELCOME TO THE MAW of the "no spin zone," Mayor. You may be in for an extended ride.

Meyera Oberndorf, Virginia Beach's longest-tenured mayor, has become a repeated target of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly.

He has labeled her "limited in her intellectual capacity" and suggested that Oberndorf stay home in the kitchen rather than try to run the state's largest city.

O'Reilly has blamed Oberndorf and the city for the deaths of two young women, killed March 30 when their car was rammed by an alleged drunken driver who police say is in the country illegally.



It's a topic he has revisited frequently on television, radio and even in his newspaper column since April 4.

O'Reilly was in Ireland on Thursday to receive an award and would not be reachable for comment till after the weekend, according to his staff.

But he has explained his passion on the subject during his broadcasts, saying he was not arguing for a general principle. "I was arguing for two dead girls."

"The bottom line on this," he said on his April 5 show, "is that all Americans have a right to protection from irresponsible people, but our governments generally have bowed to political correctness and are failing to protect us. We're going to make Virginia Beach the flash point in stopping the immigration madness. No more sanctuary cities. Period."

The next day on his radio program he said Oberndorf "should be home baking pies. This is not a woman who has any grasp of public policy."

Video:
O'Reilly's producer confronts Oberndorf
O'Reilly argues with Geraldo Rivera


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O'Reilly was still attending a private Catholic high school on Long Island in 1966 when Oberndorf began her public life, with an appointment to the Library Board.

After graduating from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., O'Reilly taught high school in Florida for two years then went back for a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University.

He was just beginning as a television journalist - in Scranton, Pa., then moving to Dallas, Denver, Portland and Hartford - when Oberndorf was elected to the City Council, and she became vice mayor in 1986, the year O'Reilly joined the ABC network as a correspondent.

In 1988 - a year before O'Reilly took over as anchor of "Inside Edition" - Oberndorf became the city's first directly elected mayor. These days she serves on the executive committee of the United States Conference of Mayors, leading its International Affairs Committee.

She doesn't figure to retire to pie baking any time soon. "I burn most things," she said Friday. "I'll put it on the burner, and then the phone rings.... "


The belittling of Oberndorf is not surprising to those who keep track of O'Reilly's polemic techniques.

"He's mostly a name-caller," said Betsi Grabe, a telecommunications professor at Indiana University who co-authored a study of the segment that opens each "The O'Reilly Factor" show: his "Talking Points Memo."

"The other thing that O'Reilly does is he really plays the fear card," she said. "He really likes to frame issues as fearful, as life- threatening."

The 27-page study was published this month in Cardiff University of Wales' magazine "Journalism Studies." It is titled "Villains, Victims and The Virtuous in Bill O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone,' Revisiting world war propaganda techniques. "

The academics analyzed six months of talking points and discovered he resorted to name-calling nearly nine times every minute.

Grabe said they went back to methods used by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis to measure broadcast techniques in the 1930s, "dusted them off a bit and then we applied them to O'Reilly, and we found that he has more incidents of propaganda per minute than some of the folks who were investigated in the '30s and '40s."

Grabe, a former South African broadcast journalist, said she had been following the Virginia Beach dust-up and wasn't surprised it captured O'Reilly's attention.

Illegal aliens narrowly trailed only terrorists on O'Reilly's list of evildoers, she said.

"He covers illegal immigrants very often," she said from her home in Bloomington, Ind., "and in a superbly negative light... He talks about them as terrorists."

Co-author Mike Conway, also a former broadcast journalist, agreed. Illegal aliens, he said, "are about as bad or evil as it gets" in O'Reilly's world view.


O'Reilly's attention focused on Virginia Beach after Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, were killed March 30.

Alfredo Ramos, 22, was charged with aggravated involuntary manslaughter after the crash. Ramos, who police said was intoxicated at the time of the wreck, had three previous alcohol-related misdemeanor convictions in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.

His immigration status was not checked then. A 2005 Police Department policy in Virginia Beach generally forbids asking the immigration status of defendants charged with misdemeanors. Police Chief Jake Jacocks Jr. has said the policy encourages illegal immigrants to report crimes without fear of retribution.

Beginning with his show April 4, O'Reilly has hammered at Oberndorf and Virginia Beach, eventually charging that it was a "sanctuary city" where illegal aliens are not only tolerated but welcomed, the better to keep Oceanfront businesses staffed.

He called for Oberndorf and Jacocks to resign.

"There's no question in Virginia Beach that the mayor is clueless," he said during his April 6 "Radio Factor" broadcast, adding later: "And the police chief is an arrogant incompetent. Alright, now, if you elect these people, that's what you're gonna get. Dead girls."


He never made clear to his audience that, in Virginia Beach, the mayor's post is largely symbolic, with no more power than any other council member.

O'Reilly, who grew up and still lives on Long Island, did not note that, unlike in New York City, mayors in Hampton Roads do not run their cities - the city managers do. City managers and their police chiefs may not be fired by area mayors, only by a majority of a city council.

The omissions are classic O'Reilly, according to Karl Vincent Frisch, spokesperson for Media Matters for America. "He doesn't take into account the facts - that's all too common with Bill O'Reilly."

The Web-based outfit describes itself as a non profit "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

The organization, which makes no bones about its disdain for O'Reilly, claims to have documented nearly 700 examples of the commentator "lying, misleading or saying outrageous things" since it opened for business in May 2004. They are tallied on the Web site www.mediamatters.org.

"He really is the king of made-up news and of taking things out of context," Frisch said.

His advice to Oberndorf was to take O'Reilly's influence seriously. He does have more than 2 million viewers on Fox every day, the most of any commentary program. Then there's also his syndicated radio program over 390 stations, a newspaper column that he has said is in hundreds of papers, and six books.

"But that shouldn't keep her from doing her job," Frisch added.

Oberndorf said she worries that O'Reilly's campaign will wind up hurting innocent, law-abiding Hispanics. As a little girl hearing her parents whisper about Hitler and his death camps and later reading Anne Frank's diary, she wondered how one human being's rants could convince people to ignore the human dignity of an entire class of people. She has a better understanding now, she said.

"Once a person has a microphone, a camera and a limitless budget, they can get into everybody's home."

So how is she dealing with the unwanted attention?

"It takes a lot of stamina and a great deal of commitment," but she said she doesn't intend to back down or to get into any televised debates with O'Reilly.

"It's like flying an airplane over a roaring fire, and instead of dropping the chemicals that put it out, you drop an inflammable, like gasoline," she said of his tactics.

"I understand that's his right. I can't react as irresponsibly as he has."


So how long can Oberndorf expect to be spinning in O'Reilly's zone?

University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill has been a hot topic since January 2005. The Columbia Journalism Review noted 25 instances when the Churchill story was covered on "The O'Reilly Factor" from January to May of that year.

Churchill, who drew O'Reilly's attention by comparing those killed at the World Trade Center attack in 2001 to civilians declared as collateral damage in U.S. military attacks, is battling to keep his job at the university in Boulder, Colo. amid allegations of research misconduct brought after the national attention.

"How long a person stays in there depends on how long he wants to go after them," Indiana University professor Conway said.

The Virginia Beach issue spawned a heated debate with Geraldo Rivera, who argued on "The Factor" that the case was about drunken driving, not illegal immigration, and who came to Oberndorf's defense.

"I think you owe that poor lady mayor an apology," Rivera said.

"No, no," O'Reilly replied.

Video clips from the battle made other news networks and may have convinced O'Reilly to keep visiting the issue on his show.

"They know that that's playing well," Conway said, "so he'll keep coming back to it because he's getting good play on it. That's something we've definitely noticed with him from time to time."


Reach Tony Germanotta at (757) 446-2377 or tony.germanotta@ pilotonline.com.
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Oreilly is right. He owes no apology to this woman, she on the other hand owes an apology to the parents of the two dead teens due to her inaction on the illegal alien problem. Sanctuary cities should be condemed period!

Johnny

I commend Bill for going after town officials. Hopefully he'll keep at it until VB rescinds it unofficial sanctuary city status.

When you put yourself out there as a public official, and your actions or inactions affect the people who are your constituants, then you are fair game. Does it matter that she looks like a grandma? NO.

Does it matter that she seems kind of lost in the media blitz? NO.
She has held the position of mayor and all the responsibilty and perks that that title entails for years. She is no innocent of the victimizer O'Reilly.

The victims were two young girls who, by the way, were too young even to vote. If she isn't up to the job she should step down and let stronger people do the job.

This is no Mayberry we are all living in anymore here in America.
This is more like "Escape from New York". Its a wild wild world out there.
We need strong informed couragous leaders. Not pansies.
And finally, as a strong woman myself, I cringe when I see women ascend to any kind of position of power and then wilt under the pressure. I saw the video of her in the backround unloading her car trunk while her aggressive husband fought to protect her honor. Toughen up lady. You are a city official, act like it. I want tough old Michelle Malkin kind of warriors in office! And I want them to take responsibilities, not act like victims.

I agree 100% ICEMAN. We desparately need strong, statesmanly leaders rather than the pitiful collection of wimps we currently have in office.

IT'S REALLY IRONIC THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK O'REILLY IS OVER BOARD....HE IS RIGHT ALL THE WAY AND UNTIL THINGS CHANGE IN VA. HE SHOULD KEEP ON...WE ASK FOR PEOPLE TO GET OUT THERE AND FIGHT BACK AND THAN WHEN SOMEONE DOES ...WE HAVE THOSE WHO COMPLAIN, MAKE JUDGEMENTS ON ANOTHER PERSON'S PASSION AND CHASTISE.
WE NEED MORE OUT CRY FROM PEOPLE OF THE MEDIA, AMERICAN COMPANIES, LAWYERS, POLITICANS, LEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND AMERICANS.