Columnist proud member of Slimed by O’Reilly Club: HeraldTimesOnline.com

I had a similar experience once. I was the subject of a front page editorial of the Black student paper at U. Mass, Nummo News.

I did not realize this until I got numerous high-5s at the student senate meeting that day.

Columnist proud member of Slimed by O’Reilly Club

By Mike Leonard H-T columnist
June 26, 2007
PHILADELPHIA — I didn’t win the prestigious Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award last weekend at the 31st annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

That honor went to Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune.

I didn’t win the next-most revered prize, the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award, which recognizes a columnist whose good works extend beyond the printed page.

That went to Mike Harden of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.

I didn’t win anything, actually. No prizes in the “general interest,” “humor” or “items” categories. Not even the enigmatic “Jeff Kramer Mystic Memorial Tie,” which is presented to the columnist who comes up with the most over-the-top example of intentionally bad writing in a competition staged during the conference.

But I can brag that no one at the annual columnists’ conference received more pats on the back, hearty handshakes and “Way to go!” congratulations.

I got slimed by Fox News program host Bill O’Reilly. It was a little like having a skunk tell you that you smell bad. Many of my colleagues expressed envy.

Each year, columnists who attend the conference submit one column for inclusion in a booklet distributed to attendees. Knowing that the bombastic host of “The O’Reilly Factor” would be a speaker at the conference, I mischievously offered up a May column I’d written concerning the Fox News host. Basically, the column was about the blowback from O’Reilly and Fox after Indiana University researchers analyzed more than 100 episodes of “The O’Reilly Factor” and concluded that the program host is a propagandist whose techniques are “heavier” and “less nuanced” than the notorious 1930s radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin.

Frankly, I didn’t expect O’Reilly to read the columnists’ booklet. But I was thrilled to see that he’d ripped my handiwork out of the bound volume and carried it up to the lectern with him. Roughly 13 minutes into his address and after repeated admonitions that people hate us, O’Reilly asked if Mike Leonard of the Hoosier Times was in the audience. (Stories printed off our Web site indicate they are copyrighted by the Hoosier Times, the parent company of the Bloomington, Bedford and Martinsville papers).

“Sorry, Mike, but you’re a dishonest guy in this column,” O’Reilly charged.

“Right back at you, Bill,” I shouted.

O’Reilly went on to deride the IU study, using the same rhetorical tools the study exposed: name-calling, distortion and inferences that lead his viewers to unfair and imbalanced conclusions.

He claimed, for example, that Fox has a “brain room” where researchers meticulously analyze information for and about Fox News. He said they studied the IU research and reported the following:

“The first few times they submitted the study, Mike, it was rejected. Rejected!” O’Reilly said. “The methodology was faulty, all right?”

...