I know that NPR hasn’t offered a transcript of this interview, and I bothered to transcribe the first 13 minutes or so. I have also seen posts on other websites looking for a transcript of it. So, I thought I’d post what I have.

Terri Gross and Bill O’Reilly Interview Transcript

Terri Gross (TG): Intro

<clip from O’Reilly Factor>

…

TG: Here it is. The interview I recorded yesterday with Bill O’Reilly.

(to interview)

Terri Gross (TG): Bill O’Reilly welcome to Fresh Air. As you probably know Al Franken was on the show when his book came out. Are you sorry you sued him?

Bill O’Reilly (BO): I didn’t sue him.

TG: Oh no Fox sued him. But I assume-

BO: Well I had no- no control over that at all, and uh I they ran it by me in the beginning and I said look if you can hold this guy accountable, um that’s fine with me. I’m looking at suing him myself for defamation. And that’s all of the input that I had into that. I didn’t see the brief, I didn’t know what they were doing. And uh, that’s how it went down.

TG: A lot of people have speculated that you convinced Fox to go with this lawsuit. You’re saying that’s not the way it happened.

BO: That’s correct. That’s what I’m saying.

TG: So- you mentioned that you were thinking of suing Al Franken yourself. Are you still thinking of doing that?

BO: No because we researched it and I’d have to show damages to win a lawsuit like that. And since Who’s Looking Out For You is the number one book in the country, and my TV program’s the number one cable news show in the country and the Radio Factor’s almost on 400 stations, it would be tough for me to show damages. Since I’m a famous person, the threshold is a lot higher than it would be um if I were an ordinary citizen. But there’s no question it was defamation and that’s what this guy traffics in.

TG: You know there’s this famous uh uh confrontation or debate that you had with Al Franken at the Book Expo earlier this year. And I want to read something Franken says about that in his book. He says “I was having fun not because I enjoy attacking people gratuitously but because O’Reilly is a bully and he deserved it. On his show he cuts off anyone who disagrees with him. If they stand up for themselves, he shoots them down.” Do you think that that’s fair? Do you think it’s fair to call you a bully on your show?

BO: Of course not. I mean, well why would anybody take anything that he says seriously. He’s a uh activist who uh propagandizes and demonizes. And you know look we have an enormous audience that comes in every night to watch the O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel. And if I were what he says I am, I couldn’t possibly succeed. Alright? People wouldn’t sit for it. Americans are fair people by and large. Um, so what this is is the usual propaganda that he puts out and tries to make money by defaming. And it’s a shame, but that’s just the way it is. You know, he does it to a lot of other people. Uh and unfortunately there’s a market for that. Uh there’s a there are people who enjoy um reading and listening to people who attack other people with whom they disagree, personally. You know, not the- forget the issues. I mean, let’s try to destroy the person. And this kind of defamation is growing in the United States, and it’s uh it’s really damaging to the country.

TG: I want to ask you about one of the famous interviews that you did on your show. Uh this has gotten a lot of um- this has been mentioned a lot in the press. An excerpt was reprinted in Harper’s Magazine. You were interviewing a son of a man who was killed in the World Trade Center attack on September 11. And he had signed an ad that was critical of the United States. This ad while condemning the terrorist actions also criticized the United States for actions it had taken in Baghdad and Vietnam. You invited him to give his point of view on your show and then you kept telling him to to shut up. And I’m I’m wondering- and how much of that is like theater and showmanship?

BO: None.

TG: Uh huh?

BO: None. If you read the transcript of that interview. Have you read the transcript?

TG: Yes I have. I ha- I read the transcript of the excerpt.

BO: No I mean outside of Harper’s.

TG: No I haven’t read the complete interview.

BO: Well you should.

TG: I read the transcript that was in Harper’s.

BO: You should get the full transcript and it’s easily available. You’ll see that that person came into the show and said that they uh attack at 9/11 was an uh quote unquote alleged attack. Alright? And then he proceeded to blame President Bush and his father, Bush the elder, for orchestrating the attack on their own country. Now once you get into that realm, we were surprised, we thought he was going to be a rationale person, uh I it is my duty alright to say “can you prove that? Do you have any evidence to demonstrate what you’re saying?” He had none. So then I aborted the interview. Um, just as if I were talking to you Terri and I were using four-letter words or defaming someone or acting inappropriately on Fresh Air, you would stop the interview yourself. Now, um, we chose to run that interview to show how despicable some people can be. And to also show how this kind of a thing gets out of control very easily. Now. Harper’s and the left wing press would do what they always do. They took it out of context. They didn’t print the whole interview to show what the guy’s wild allegations were. Defamatory allegations by the way. And all they showed was that I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. And it is so irresponsible. And this is what happens all the time. I mean these these hit books, these slander books, smear books. That’s just what they do. They take an interview that runs I don’t know five minutes and they’ll they’ll extrapolate sixty seconds to make you look foolish. I’ve been on the air seven years at the Fox News Channel. Alright? We’ve never had to retract a sorry. We very rarely tell anybody to shut up. I think it’s been done five times in seven years. And um the other times that we do it, it’s like “Oh shut up” it’s a joke. You know, that kind of thing. We get the best guests in the country. The most prestigious people come in here. Condoleezza Rice, Arnold Schwarzenegger last week. Richard Gephardt last week. So, to try to make this thing out to be some kind of circus, which the left wing press does, is blatantly dishonest and unfair.

7:55

TG: My guest is Bill O’Reilly and he has a new book called Who’s Looking Out For You? You are very cr- critical when you think the media is defaming somebody. I want to ask you about a statement you made on your own show. Um Janet Maslin who is a former film critic and current book critic for the New York Times uh reviewed Al Franken’s book when it was published in September. And she repeated in the book Franken’s assertions about a couple things that you said that he said weren’t true. And um, but really the jist of the article was about his book, not about you. And and and after that on your show what you said about her is “A New York Times reviewer named Janet Maslin attacked me in print. But Maslin’s gleeful libel demonstrates the viciousness that has enveloped the Times. I knew that once I took on the New York Times the paper’s character assassins would take dead aim on me. That is why few journalists would ever criticize the Times. They know the paper will come after them in a very personal way. There is no check on the power of the New York Times. It prints what it wants with impunity. The Times is pushing its far left secular agenda hard and will use any and all methods to hurt those who stand in its way. The culture war in America is getting bloodier. It will be interesting to see who will ultimately prevail.” You are basically calling her a character assassin who was loosed on you by the Times and and and you know .. this was just it was a book review of Al Franken’s book.

BO: No it wasn’t. It was much more than that. Any book reviewer knows that uh if you review a non-fiction book and there is an explosive allegation, a defamatory allegation made by the author, that you don’t print it as fact. She did. She didn’t call me or ask me for my side of the story. She printed it as fact. She used Al Franken as a primary source. Alright? Now, Janet Maslin has been in this business a long time. She knows what a primary source is. She has no idea about his allegations against me or anybody else. She hasn’t researched them. In fact they’re fallacious. So why would she in the body of a review alright reprint his libel as fact? That is blatantly dishonest. It’s against every journalistic um rule. Um, I reviewed movies myself and I know Maslin for a long time and she will basically toe the company line. And did. That was an outrageous violation of journalistic ethics and I called her on it.

Terri Gross: I’m just going to read what she wrote. She wrote “Note to Bill O’Reilly, the de facto publicist for lies, thanks to Fox News’s hapless efforts to block its publication. Never say ‘never said it’ or ‘you can’t find a transcript where I said it’ when a man with fourteen researchers is on your trail. In a book that baits its targets with varying degrees of success, Mr. Franken makes a bullseye out of Mr. O’Reilly. First, the prize. He shows how Mr. O’Reilly’s erroneous claim that he won a Peabody Award evolved into even bigger fibs once it was challenged.” And then she- she says “then the porn. A mortifyingly stilted erotic passage from Mr. O’Reilly’s novel Those Who Trespass is sent up repeatedly here. Then the political affiliation, a 1994 voter registration form is dug up courtesy of NPR and reprinted to contradict Mr. O’Reilly’s 1996 claim that he was not enrolled in a political party.” So, I mean that’s basically what she wrote and you’re accusing her of slander and character assassination.

BO: Absolutely. Well, it’s not slander because slander is spoken word and libel is written word. Um, I never said I won a Peabody award at any time. Alright? That’s the fact. And I mislabeled a Peabody a Polk. My former program Inside Edition won a Polk award. I called it a Peabody. Twice on the Factor I corrected that. That was two and a half years ago. So, by saying in her review that I said I won a Peabody, that is an absolute lie. Um, she could have easily found out the truth by making one phone call. Refused to do it. Transcripts show that I corrected the record. All I was doing was sticking up for my former program. I had no uh dog in the fight. I- somebody was maligning it and I said “Hey, these guys won a Peabody.” I misspoke, it was a Polk. Who cares? Who cares?

TG: Here’s my question. You might accuse her and others might agree or disagree but you might accuse her of writing an unresearched book review. Something that should have been corroborated but she wasn’t. But instead you’re accusing her of character assassination and basically doing the Times’ bidding to go after you because Fox is a critic of of the Times. So I’m wondering why you’d say that since you’re opposed to character defamation.

BO: Ok. Because it’s true and I can prove it. Ok? I just explained to you that I did not say I won any award. She wrote in her review that I said that. That is fallacious. That is wrong.

TG: She was quoting the Franken’s book.

~13:00X

BO: She wasn’t quoting anyone. There’s no quotes around that Madam. And if you read the X. She was stating what she believed to be a fact which isn’t a fact. You don’t use a defamatory

Terri Gross:

Uh, you write in your book I bought the weapons of mass destruction argument too quickly and failed to predict how politicized the war would be. Have you had any second thoughts about the war or the way the case for war was presented?

Bill O’Reilly:

Well. Certainly the WMD situation is troubling. And all Americans should demand within the next nine months before the presidential candidate uh candidates really swing in for an explanation of what exactly happened.

Americans will accept mistakes if mistakes were made honestly. But it needs to be defined by the Bush Administration why the intelligence was faulty. And you know there is no spin on that. They have to do it.

The other thing is, that the war became politicized very quickly. Uh which caught me by surprise. We were right in our analysis that the war would go well in the beginning, but surely the Bush administration underestimated the difficulties in post-war Iraq.

And all of those things need to be addressed by the president to the American people directly. Uh he needs to explain what they did right and what they did wrong. So that the folks can know exactly what went down in this very very serious occupation.

Terri Gross:

Bill O’Reilly will be back in the…

This is a fantastic little (8 page) introduction to help you get started using the statistical package that all the cool kids are using:

http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/unwilling_S.pdf

If you were are looking to break a spreadsheet addiction, you could hardly go wrong with R and if you really just absolutely have to see your data in columns & rows be sure to add the R.utils package so you can use the data.entry() function. It’s spartan, sure, but the Spartans did pretty well for themselves for quite some time. :)

-kevin

This website looks valuable. I am looking into the Freemind mindmapping software and VLC which I think can play any audio or video.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/the-ultimate-student-resource-list.html

For those who do use Endnote, I recommend keeping the The Knowledge Navigation Center (KNC) at the library in mind. They teach a class on Endnote and they are good about responding to emails asking questions. I’ve been impressed so far with their helpfulness.

For those who don’t use Endnote, I recommend it.

Thanks to everyone who attended our second meeting.  We had excellent turnout.

The minutes have been posted on the ctools site. Please check them out and ask me if you have any questions.

Please email your ideas for the faculty panel by Monday, Oct. 20th.

-Your president &c.

Thank you to everyone who attended our first 2008-2009 academic year meeting.

It looks like we’ve got a great year ahead of us.  Particularly exciting are the prospects of a GLaM sponsored Halloween gathering after our October 31st Colloquium, as well as regular brown bag lunches for graduate students.

If there are any questions or further comments about the meeting or about GLaM this year, please let me know.

See you at the next meeting.

-Eric

Say you’re using one of the Macbooks in the soundlab and for some strange reason you need to record simultaneously from two separate USB devices. For this example I’ll use one of the Roland UA-25s and the Glottal Systems E.G.G. because the E.G.G. seems to have a really terrible preamp (loads of hiss even with gain on “low” and even using the Behringer ECM8000 Mic designed for it) and I like to use the Roland to record audio while using the E.G.G. to record the glottal pulses.

1. plug-in both devices
2. launch Applications/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup.app (I know the name makes it seems like this is for Midi only, but it’s really “Audio and Midi Setup”, go figure.)
3. Select Audio –> “Open Aggregate Device Editor”
4. Click the [ + ] button.
5. Click on the new Aggregate Device name and rename it something useful and informative like “Roland UA-25 and E.G.G. Stereo”.
6. Check the “Use” checkbox next to the Edirol (Roland) UA-25 and the E.G.G. devices in the “Structure” box.
7. (optional) Drag the devices around if you know you want one on the right channel and one on the left.
8. Click “Done” and quit the poorly named Audio MIDI Setup.

Now you can open Praat or Audacity (or whatever) and record stereo “audio” with the nice, clean mono vox on one channel and the E.G.G. signal on another. Yay.

P.S. I wasn’t able to figure out how to do this on Windows. Probably it’s not possible. :)

By unanimous vote at today’s end-of-year GLaM picnic, Eric Brown was voted in as the new GLaM president for 2008-2009. Congratulations, Eric, and thank you for all the good things that we know lie ahead!

I just wanted to take a moment and remind everyone that the department is not moving to a new building this summer. So when you’ve wrapped up your term projects and turned in your final grades for the semester be sure to take a moment to not look around your office or lab space, not pack up your personal belongings, and not prepare computers for the LS&A IT staff to move.

Boxes and tape will not be available in the main office which, incidentally, will be closing at 4:30 this afternoon.