‘Fair and balanced’ my eye

Fox News Network was forced to create an auto-mail response just to
deal with complaints about my pre-empted appearance on “The O’Reilly
Factor” last Friday. That’s how heavy the avalanche of e-mail was to the
network after the program was canceled.

“Our entire show on Friday had to be canceled at the last minute, due
to the fact that the host of the show (Bob Dornan) was trapped on an
airplane that was unable to land in New York until after the show
started … so we were forced to air a repeat,” the Fox official
statement said. “This was something that was totally out of our control
— nobody likes all of their hard work, time and money to go down the
drain — but with no host, we could have no show.

“We were all extremely upset that our show could not get on the air
… and Mr. Farah was one of six guests who all had to be canceled at
the last minute.

“As for the other times Mr. Farah claims to have been ‘bumped’ …
that is stretching the truth a bit. We have been in contact with him
over the past four weeks about appearing on the program, but he was only
booked one time — for this past Friday.”

Signed, “The O’Reilly Factor.”

An earlier version of the auto-mailer, which spelled my name wrong,
suggested I would be back on the show soon. That was changed after I,
er, had words with the producer of the show — a David Brown, I believe.

I told Brown, in no uncertain terms, that I would not be flying to
San Francisco or any other location to do a six-minute segment on the
show. I explained that the story I was going to tell — about White
House political abuse of the Internal Revenue Service — was much too
important to be dealt with in such a superficial way.

Brown told me I was lucky to get on the show at all. He added that
because of my bad attitude, he would personally ensure that I never
appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” again. He further stated that the rest
of the Fox Network would be off-limits to me if he had anything to say
about it.

Mr. Brown, it seems, is on some kind of an ego trip. It no longer
matters whether the story I am addressing is important. The only thing
that matters, according to him, is the fact that I “attacked” Fox News
in a column earlier this week.

Attack? Did Mr. Brown think that column was an attack? I guess he
really hasn’t read much of my material before. If I had been attacking
Fox News, he would have known it. In fact, I wrote that column primarily
so that WorldNetDaily readers would understand there was no conspiracy
to keep me off the air at Fox — that it was all a big mix-up.

Brown took it personally. Now it’s a power play. Farah will NEVER be
allowed on his show or his network. I don’t know how Bill O’Reilly feels
about that. Many of us actually thought that the “Factor” was HIS show,
not Brown’s. Who knows? Maybe Brown is right. Maybe he’s running Fox
News Network, not Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Maybe “fair and
balanced” is just a hollow marketing slogan.

I will tell you this. Fox has a long way to go before it presents a
real alternative to the propaganda of the other TV networks — a long
way to go.

However, as I told Brown on the telephone this week, I’m not worried.
He’s the one who should be worried. You see, more people are reading
WorldNetDaily and getting their news from the New Media than are
watching his program.

The day is coming, very soon, when the boys running Fox and CNN will
be trying to get the attention of WorldNetDaily and the New Media rather
than the other way around.