Bill O’Reilly says Fox News is the only media outlet willing to question President Obama.
Speaking about his trip to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this weekend, O’Reilly lamented the fact that other outlets have given up critically looking at Obama’s policies .
He started the conversation by noticing that the White House paid more attention to Fox at the annual dinner, which typically includes humor as the president pokes fun at the media.
At this year’s dinner, Obama lambasted a number of targets , including NBC and Rush Limbaugh. He also touched on the controversy that arose when the History Channel miniseries The Bible had an actor who looked remarkably like Obama play Satan.
Obama speculated that the History Channel didn’t show up to the dinner because they were “embarrassed” for the portrayal.
“Of course, that never kept Fox News from showing up,” Obama joked.
For Bill O’Reilly, the increased attention on Fox News from the president comes because the network is the only one looking closely at his positions.
“The reason that’s happening,” O’Reilly explained, “is that we stand alone here in FNC in our bringing skepticism to the president. We tell the folks when he does something right — I do at least — and then when he does something wrong, we say that.”
O’Reilly added, “But you’re not gonna get that on the other networks. There’s gotta be critical mass. It’s gotta be all over the place for those people to weigh in and you know what I’m talking about.”
Bill O’Reilly’s position may not resonate well with a large subset of news consumers. In a survey released in February, Fox News was shown to be the most polarizing of all networks. Fox scored highest as both the network people “trust the least” and “trust the most,” suggesting little room in the middle for moderate positions on the network.
