My Experiment in Ignorance is drawing to a close. Monday's Factor was rightfully pre-empted by the tragedy ongoing in New Orleans. Greta van Sustern was on for the entire hour with live reports shown from many areas of the city. I love New Orleans, and my prayers and monetary donations are going out to everyone affected by the hurricane.
Nonetheless, I am going to carry on here with a summary of Week #4 of The Factor. I've summarized the amount of time OReilly devotes to stories as a measure of the importance of that topic to both him and his viewers. Week One is here, and Weeks 2 & 3 are in fancy chart form here.
I'm going to sum up the whole month of my suffering soon. Then, I'm planning to blitz my mind with dKos and other REALITY based news sources to let you guys know what I've been missing. I cannot WAIT for this part of the experiment! For now, here's Week 4 in review:
WEEK FOUR
TOPIC |
SEGMENTS |
TIME |
AIRTIME% |
Aruba/Natalee Holloway |
8 |
41 minutes |
24.6% |
Jessica's Law/Child Sex |
5 |
25 minutes |
15.0% |
Cindy Sheehan |
3 |
15 minutes |
9.0% |
Terrorists/Terrorism |
3 |
14 minutes |
8.4% |
Illegal Aliens/Border |
2 |
11 minutes |
6.6% |
Bush's Legacy |
2 |
10 minutes |
6.0% |
"Able Danger"/9-11 CoverUp |
2 |
10 minutes |
6.0% |
War In Iraq |
1 |
7 minutes |
4.2% |
Pat Robertson |
1 |
6 minutes |
3.6% |
Intelligent Design |
1 |
5 minutes |
3.0% |
Michael Graham |
1 |
5 minutes |
3.0% |
Overweight Americans |
1 |
4 minutes |
2.4% |
Janet Arvizo |
1 |
4 minutes |
2.4% |
One old segment was replayed:
Celebrity Divorces: 7 minutes, 4.2% airtime
With Secondary Topics, OReilly manages to tackle two birds with one stone. Al Sharpton was interviewed for 7 minutes, but the whole story was a smear of Cindy Sheehan. He attacked Jamie Gorelick during a 6 minute segment on "Able Danger." And, while discussing Terrorists/Terrorism, he attacked Italy for 5 minutes (hiding terrorists in exchange for a journalist's life), Scotland Yards for 4 minutes (shooting an innocent Brazilian on 7/7), and the UN for 5 minutes (soft on terrorism).
The overarching theme of OReilly, to me, seems to be "Our Children are in DANGER! - and Republicans will save them." How do we counter this drumbeat of a theme?