Building Reality: The Politics of Reality. Bill O’Reilly Spins in His “No-Spin Zone” (Chapter 3 Extra Post)

Note:  This is a “catch-up” post since I think I might be missing one related to Chapter 3! : )

Bill O’Reilly’s program “The Factor” is a very popular weekday news analysis program on Fox News’ Cable Television Channel.  O’Reilly introduces each program with, “Caution:  You are about to enter a No Spin Zone.” But, if you watch this program and think some spin is involved, you are not dreaming.  A study done in 2007 by independent researchers and published in Indiana University’s Journalism Studies academic journal found that this program is in fact, loaded with “spin.”

According to Newman (2010), putting “spin” on an event “is “to give it a particular interpretation, often one that is to the speaker’s advantage” (p. 65).  Newman says that spin is a “valuable political resource” used by politicians as well as by journalists, lobby groups and web bloggers (p. 65).  Despite his daily proclamations to the contrary, Bill O’Reilly is no exception.   He spins plenty!

A detailed discussion of spin found in a study of six months worth of The O’Reilly Factor episodes from 2007 done by Indiana University researchers Mile Conway, Mary Elizabeth Grabe, and Kevin Grieves can be read here: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/5535.html

A summary of what these researchers found is that O’Reilly “consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.”  In contrast to his daily “no-spin” proclamation, they found that he called a person or group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, or almost nine times a minute during his opening segment for each show.  They also found that he used one of seven propaganda techniques (name-calling, glittering generalities, card-stacking, bandwagon, plain folks, transfer, or testimonial) nearly 13 times per minute in his editorials that open each program.

I guess the lesson is this:  Be wary of any political commentator who claims to be spin-free!  You can buy a variety of "No Spin Zone" merchandise from Bill O'Reilly's website, but as for me, I think I will save my money.