Carroll on O'Reilly*

The editorial board of the student-run Daily Emerald at the University of Oregon has posted a commentary praising John Carroll's "pseudo-journalists" speech that L.A. Observed put the word out about on Saturday. The commentary elaborates on Carroll's criticism of Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

Carroll described an incident in November 2003 when O'Reilly attacked the Los Angeles Times for exposing then-California governor candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger's history of sexual harassment. On the show, O'Reilly said "Do you think the L.A. Times sent a squad of reporters to Arkansas to investigate Bill Clinton's problems with women? No, it did not."

Carroll pointed out that O'Reilly's critique was not only off-base but completely inaccurate; The Los Angeles Times printed a 4,000-word exclusive on Dec. 21, 1993 about Clinton's "troopergate" sex scandal.

Evidently, as Carroll jokingly noted, Fox News Channel employees don't have access to computers, or they may have been able to do a Lexis-Nexis search. O'Reilly never apologized or acknowledged his error.

* The full text of the speech is now available.