By: Dave Astor How do the St. Petersburg Times and New York Daily News feel about being featured on an "enemies list" that columnist/TV host Bill O'Reilly unveiled Tuesday?
"We reject Mr. O'Reilly's characterizations of our journalism but appreciate that he reads us regularly," Times Executive Editor Neil Brown said wryly, when reached Wednesday by E&P.
Brown added that he doesn't think the Times will lose subscribers and advertisers because of the O'Reilly list. "People make up their own minds," he said.
A Daily News spokesperson said Wednesday that the paper would have "no comment" about being named by O'Reilly.
Why was the Times on O'Reilly's short three-name list (which also included MSNBC)? "He seems to have disliked our work for some time," replied Brown. He declined to say what specific work O'Reilly disliked, but several possible examples came up in a Google search.
For instance, Times columnist Eric Deggans -- in a Sept. 14, 2005, piece -- criticized O'Reilly for what Deggans felt were insensitive post-Hurricane Katrina comments about poor people in New Orleans. "The larger implications of [O'Reilly's] words also are obvious," he wrote. "These often poor, often black hurricane victims brought all this misery and death on themselves, because they weren't motivated enough to succeed in America." Deggans wrote that O'Reilly was deflecting criticism of the federal government's "horrific delays in hurricane relief."
O'Reilly responded on his Fox News program. "Deggans is a dishonest, racially motivated correspondent writing for perhaps the worst newspaper in the country," he said.
The Daily News made headlines in October 2004 when, citing unidentified sources, it alleged that O'Reilly had agreed to pay Andrea Mackris anywhere from $2 million to $10 million to settle her sexual harassment charges against him.
E&P called O'Reilly's office to ask why he's upset with the Daily News and Times, and an assistant e-mailed an O'Reilly statement that said the two papers "have consistently used information provided to them by the far-left smear websites." O'Reilly was not more specific.
O'Reilly said on his Web site that he put the Times, News, and MSNBC on his list because they're "the worst offenders. In the months to come, we expect to add more names to this list. We recommend that you do not patronize these operations and that advertisers do the same. They are dishonest and not worth your time and money."
Will O'Reilly mention the two newspapers in the Creators Syndicate column he does in addition to his broadcast work? "That remains to be seen," he replied in the e-mail from his office.
The "enemies list" follows criticism O'Reilly received after his November comment that San Francisco didn't deserve protection from a terrorist attack because it banned military recruiting in public schools. (He said this was a joke.) O'Reilly stated afterward, "I'm glad the smear sites made a big deal out of it. Now we can all know who was with the anti-military Internet crowd. We'll post the names of all who support the smear merchants on billoreilly.com."
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NOTE: An earlier version of this article suggested that there was wide "media" criticism of O'Reilly's remarks about San Francisco. Actually, criticism was very scattered in the mainstream media, with most of it coming from blogs.
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