EARTH TO O'REILLY

A Few Key Facts Weaken Your Story

To Bill O'Reilly, it's quite clear. Boulder's "secular progressives"
are "out of control." When they're not bungling famous murder cases,
they're urging kids to have "indiscriminate sex."

O'Reilly, the Fox News performer, has seized upon the story about a
controversial panel discussion about sex and drugs held at Boulder
High School. The discussion was produced partly by high-school
students as part of the University of Colorado Conference on World Affairs.

As O'Reilly noted, a psychologist in that session (a talk about sex
and drugs) said, "I am going to encourage you to have sex and
encourage you to use drugs appropriately." O'Reilly did not mention
the critical caveat, which was:

"Why I am going to take that position is because you are going to do
it anyway. My approach to this is to be realistic. And I think that
as a psychologist and a health educator, it is more important to
educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to."

The subsequent talk included explicit language. At least one student
was offended; she said the arguments for abstinence had been
neglected. She also objected to the fact that some students were
required to attend. Her points were sound.

In a recent broadcast, O'Reilly had this to say:

"It's hard to believe that in America today you can have a town as
out of control as Boulder. You know about the Midyette baby case, 14
months to get an indictment on a murder case there. You know about
JonBenet Ramsey, and now you have Boulder High School.

"But it doesn't seem that the residents of Boulder care if their high
school tells their kids to go out and have sex of all kinds at all
ages and to use narcotics. They simply don't care in Boulder. Am I wrong?"

He is wrong. People do care. Some do object to the panel discussion.
Some don't. People of good will and sound morals can disagree about
the actual incident. There is not one unassailably correct opinion on this.

A nuanced view came in a recent report by George Garcia, the Boulder
Valley School District superintendent. First, Garcia noted that no
student should have been required to attend and that students in the
future will be able opt out of potentially objectionable presentations.

Garcia concluded that the 90-minute panel discussion was, in general,
appropriate for high school students, because its intent was to
discuss the risk of engaging in certain behaviors before gaining the
maturity to understand and cope with the consequences.

Garcia added, "This is not to say that certain comments were not, in
any context, unnecessarily crude or that certain points were not in
direct contradiction with district health and conduct standards. They were."

Further, Garcia noted that the presentation violated school-district
policy on the "teaching of controversial subjects." That policy
requires representation of a broad range of views. Boulder High
faculty and staff who did not observe that policy have been
reprimanded, Garcia said.

O'Reilly did not tell viewers that Garcia had said anything of the
sort. On the contrary, O'Reilly implied that the school district
fully endorsed the presentation. After thus ignoring and distorting
key facts about the panel discussion, he said it was "another
educational outrage that makes (Ward) Churchill look insignificant."

In one O'Reilly broadcast, a Fox News staffer follows school board
president Helayne Jones into her garage, ignores her request to leave
her private property and continues pelting her with questions about
whether the session was "appropriate."

Reporters are supposed to ask tough questions. But this isn't
Watergate. And O'Reilly is no Woodward. Hounding a school board
president in her own garage has the look and feel of harassment (and
is trespassing). After the broadcast showed similar ambush footage of
the Boulder High principal and Garcia, O'Reilly called them "cowards."

Then, referring to the sex talk, O'Reilly said: "This is one of the
worst things I've ever seen. It epitomizes what happens when secular
progressives take over.

"It is interesting to note that there has been no public outcry in
Boulder. Many parents seem content to have their kids encouraged to
take drugs and have indiscriminate sex. So the people of Boulder are
really getting what they want, an unbelievably permissive public
school run by cowards who will not explain the benefits of forcing
young people to sit through an exposition like that."

No outcry? Advocating indiscriminate sex? Unrepentantly forcing kids
to attend? Falsehoods all. O'Reilly doesn't correct the record.

Is the subsequent public ranting any surprise? Much of the public
response to O'Reilly's broadcast is just angry. But some is
frightening. An e-mail sent to Garcia (and copied to the Camera)
called him a "moron" and "lowlife." It said, "I saw you run away from
Bill O'Reilly's questions. Based on your cowardice, if by chance you
would like to discuss this matter further with me up close and
personal, let me know and I will be glad to accommodate you. A coward
like you who would treat children as you have would be no match."

The e-mail says it's wrong to feed students the "garbage of liberal
sex and drugs" and suggests that Garcia deserves to be "tortured and
then murdered by a distraught parent."

O'Reilly did not encourage his viewers to issue veiled threats. But
he did omit critical exculpatory facts while portraying his
philosophical opponents as "villains" and "cowards" who are "out of
control." His is an irresponsible form of rhetoric, sadly common in
public discourse. Puerile propaganda is neither fair nor balanced,
and it does a grave disservice to the unwary public.