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Bill O Reilly
William James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. (born September 10, 1949) is the host of a popular American cable television news analysis program, The O'Reilly Factor on the FOX News Channel. O'Reilly also hosts a radio program syndicated by Westwood One called The Radio Factor and has authored five books, one of which is a novel. Recently, he has voiced concern about what he sees as the harmful influence of gangsta rap on children, the mismanagement of charity funds for September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks victims, and the alleged liberal bias of The New York Times and other media outlets.
O'Reilly was born in Manhattan, New York to William and Angela O'Reilly, from Brooklyn and Bergen County, New Jersey respectively. His father was an oil company accountant and his mother was a homemaker. He and his family moved to the Levittown planned community located in Nassau County on Long Island when he was a toddler. O'Reilly's only sibling, a younger sister named Janet, is a nurse.
An Irish Catholic, O'Reilly attended Chaminade High School, an all-male Marianist school in Mineola, New York. While there, he played goalie and wing on the ice hockey team, and also was on the football, basketball, and baseball teams. A baseball player since age 7, he was New York Mets ball boy (known then as the "Midget Mets") during his childhood. He was a lifeguard and gave swimming lessons during the summer.
After graduating from Chaminade in 1967, O'Reilly advanced to Marist College, a small, co-educational private school in Poughkeepsie, New York. While at Marist, O'Reilly played quarterback, place kicker, and punter on the football team, and also was a columnist and features writer for the school's newspaper, The Circle As an honors student majoring in history, he spent his junior year of college abroad, attending Queen Mary College at the University of London He also played semi-professional baseball during this time as a pitcher for the Brooklyn Monarchs, leading him to try out to play for the Mets. O'Reilly received his Bachelor of Arts in 1971.
O'Reilly married Maureen McPhilmy, a public relations executive, in 1995. The couple has one daughter, Madeline, born in 1998, and a son, Spencer, born in 2003. Since approximately 2001, O'Reilly has not discussed his family publicly due to security concerns, including past death threats.
After graduating from Marist, Bill O'Reilly moved to Miami, Florida, where he taught English and history at a Jesuit high school for two years. After leaving Miami, O'Reilly returned to school, earning a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University in 1976. While attending BU, he was a reporter and columnist for various local newspapers and alternative news weeklies, including the Boston Phoenix. O'Reilly did his broadcast journalism internship in Miami during this time, and was also an entertainment writer and movie reviewer for the Miami Herald.
O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring positions in Scranton; Dallas; Denver; Portland, Oregon; Hartford; and Boston. He also reported the weather for a brief period when he first started his career in Scranton. In 1980, he anchored his own program on WCBS-TV in New York and later became a CBS News correspondent. While at CBS News, O'Reilly covered the wars in the Falkland Islands and El Salvador, amongst others. During his stints in Dallas and Denver, he won two Emmy Awards for journalistic excellence. In 1986, O'Reilly joined ABC News as a correspondent on ABC World News Tonight. In three years, he appeared on the show over one hundred times, receiving two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting.
Some of O'Reilly's stints at local news stations did not go well, especially when it came to his relationships with management and other on-air talent. Former coworkers have called him "obnoxious", "self-centered", "dishonest", and "paranoid." At news bureaus and stations he worked for, O'Reilly frequently made what he has called "political mistakes" such as criticizing management decisions and story selections for news broadcasts that contributed to his leaving various positions along the way.
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Artist Biography - Bill O Reilly
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 Some critics contend that O'Reilly often makes up facts and figures to support his points. FAIR, a left-leaning media watchdog group, published a book, The Oh Really? Factor, documenting alleged false accusations and inaccurate statements O'Reilly has made on his show. FAIR complains that O'Reilly distorts the news by framing it through his bias.
For example, after the Supreme Court ruled that public hospitals could not test pregnant women for drugs and send the results to the police without consent, O'Reilly said "Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment"
During the 2000 election, O'Reilly suggested Al Gore was running "on a quasi-socialistic platform" with "work and production being supervised by the government." FAIR claims O'Reilly had been extremely tough on President Clinton during his tenure in office, but refrained from criticizing the Bush administration when it first entered office. "President Bush ran on the slogan 'reformer with results,'" he said, "That sounds good to me." However, this may be a personal bias, due to Al Gore's refusal to appear on his program. And O'Reilly has consistently argued against some of George W. Bush's policies, while defending many of Gore's ideals.
In March 2003, O'Reilly called for a boycott of French products and services sold in the United States due to President Jacques Chirac's stance on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The boycott is focused on high-profile French products such as cheese, wine, cosmetics, and bottled water, in addition to French-owned companies conducting business in the U.S., such as Air France.
Critics contend that that any effect the boycott has on France's $1.65 trillion (USD) GDP would be minimal. O'Reilly counters this by saying that French exports to America have declined significantly. State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, a leading opponent of a proposal to legally ban the sale of French wine in Pennsylvania, appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on May 8, 2003, and expressed "surprise" that he received only favorable responses from O'Reilly's audience. "O'Reilly's ability to rally them for an anti-free trade position was clearly limited," he said. However, O'Reilly himself was opposed to legal bans on French products, saying he preferred citizen boycotts. "You might have convinced me," he told Cohen on the air.
On April 27, 2004, O'Reilly said on The Factor that the Paris Business Review stated that France had lost "millions of dollars", suggesting that this was because of his boycott. Subsequent investigations by various watchdog groups, specifically Media Matters, showed that there is no publication of that name in France. O'Reilly has since stated that it was a publication by a different name that he got the information from; however, he has not named this publication.
Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America on 18 March 2003, O'Reilly made the following promise: "If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." In another appearance on the same program on 10 February 2004, O'Reilly responded to repeated requests for him to honor his pledge: "My analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm not pleased about it at all." With regard to never again trusting the current U.S. government, he said, "I am much more skeptical of the Bush administration now than I was at that time."
Bibliography
Books by O'Reilly
Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television (1998), ISBN 0963124684
The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life (2000), ISBN 0767905288
The No-Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America (2001), ISBN 0767908481
Who's Looking Out for You (2003), ISBN 0767913795
The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families (2004), ISBN 0060544244
Books about O'Reilly
The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (2003), ISBN 158322601X
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For more information , enjoy the official homepage of Bill O Reilly
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