Bill O'Reilly aired a falsely edited video to discredit Ted Koppel [View all]

Bill O'Reilly had guest Bernie Goldberg on his show on 9/24/2012. The purpose of the interview was to discredit Ted Koppel who had been critical of conservative media, including Fox News. O'Reilly played a short clip of what was presented as an appearance on his show by Ted Koppel 4 days earlier. In the clip, Koppel appears to admit that he doesn't know who Fox News reporter Bret Beir is.

Here's the transcript from the video clip O'Reilly ran on the 9/24/2012 edition of his show The O'Reilly Factor:
<<TED KOPPEL: I don't think anyone is going to be confused as to the ideological belief of most of the people who appear on Fox.

O'REILLY: I think that's grossly unfair to the hard news reporters, OK. If you look at our bureau system and the people we have reporting, all right, I'll run them down for you. Bret Baier, is he an ideologue.

KOPPEL: I don't know, Bret.>>

O'Reilly and Goldberg then proceed to castigate Koppel for the rest of the segment for his "...tremendous gap in his journalistic knowledge" as Goldberg put it.

The problem is that that exchange between O'Reilly and Koppel never happened.


I saw the video clip above and was curious to hear more of Koppel's remarks. So I watched the video from O'Reilly's 9/20/2012 interview with Koppel. The two versions of the Koppel interview were completely different and mutually incompatible.

Here's the transcript from the 9/20/2012 edition of the O'Reilly Factor:
<<KOPPEL: I don't think anyone is going to be confused as to the ideological belief of most of the people who appear on Fox.

O'REILLY: I think that's grossly unfair to the hard news reporters. Ok? If you look at our bureau system and the people we have reporting, the network is more traditional, I think that's a fairer term than the other network news and they give weight to people, the commentators and the people that they hire.

Now, if you look at all of the journalists and we can tick them down if you want, all right -- Rather, Brokaw, Cronkite, they're all left-wing guys, all of them; and you know that.

KOPPEL: Hold on. I would argue that back in the day, you didn't know what Cronkite was.>>

The O'Reilly Factor and Fox News appear to have deliberately editied the video of Koppel to discredit him.

For now, the video and transcripts from the two shows are online at the O'Reilly Factor website -- how much longer they'll leave the video and transcripts up is anyone's guess.

I hesitate to post links to Fox News, but you can find them on the "On-Air" segment for O'Reilly at the Fox News website.

The title of the 9/20/2012 segment is, 'Ted Koppel on the worthiness of cable news', and the title of the 9/24/2012 segment is, 'Bernie: Koppel showed a 'tremendous gap' in his journalistic knowledge'.