I am writing to express my unhappiness with your decision to reprove Terri Gross for her conduct of the interview with Bill O'Reilly. I think that the rebuke was undeserved. I listened to the entire interview. I was suprised, actually, at how "fair and balanced" the discussion was until the very end. Gross, who is one of the handful of interviews who is is not ridiculous to mention in the same breath as Studs Terkel, did her usually thoughtful and respectful job. It was not she but O'Reilly who had a temper tantrum -- over a book review he claimed not have read -- and satlked out. My exposure to O'Reilly has been fairly minimal -- I also heard the entire interview in which he cut off the relative of the WTC bombing victim and this interview. I ahd no preconcveived views about him and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I conclude from the two experiences I have ahdw ith him that he is a boastful bully and an arrogant jerk who cannot tolerate disagreement. Perhaps that is unfair, but Gross was respectful, polite, and perceptive throughout the interview. If she asked hims ome tough questions, that is because she is supposed to. She is, after all, a journalist. Reprimanding Gross for a touchy subject acting likea spoiled child when she is doing her job looks like NPR is knuckling under to pressure from powerful interests. It must have a chilling effect on serious, i.e., hardball, journalism on NPR and elsewhere, I am disappointed. I am, I should say, a loyal contributor who has paid my annual support for NPR every year for decades. Continue to make it worth my while.
Justin Schwartz, Esq.
--- Jeet Heer <jeet at sturdynet.com> wrote:
> Boy, this ombudsman is a real idiot. The Gross
> interview was great -- much
> more professional than O'Reilly's own interviews.
> She really exposed him for
> the sour self-pitying bully that he is. Anyways, I
> wrote the following
> e-mail to the ombudsman. I would encourage others to
> write in as well. the
> e-mail is: ombudsman at npr.org
>
> Hi,
>
> This is just a quick note to say that I think you
> are mistaken to rebuke
> Terry Gross for her Bill O'Reilly interview.
> O'Reilly is a controversial
> figure who has said many harsh things; Ms. Gross
> quite rightly asked him
> about these things. But she did so in a polite and
> calm manner, in the
> context of a very professional interview, the vast
> bulk of which was taken
> up discusing O'Reilly's book. Listening to the
> interview, I came away with
> the impression that O'Reilly is a typical bully --
> he's happy enough to yell
> and scream at others but when he's challenged he'll
> start whining. So the
> interview in that sense was quite accurate. By the
> way, O'Reilly also lied
> constantly during the interview. If you do some
> digging around the web, you
> can find the actual facts behind the Peabody award
> brouhaha and his
> interview with the son of the 9/11 victim. The
> actual events that happened
> do not square at all with O'Reilly's version of
> events. So your rebuke of
> Gross was, among other things, a defense of someone
> who used the NPR
> airwaves to spread lies.
>
> Best,
>
> Jeet Heer
>
>
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>
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