Bill O’Reilly Takes Sen. Tom Coburn To The Woodshed For Criticizing Fox News

Mediaite.com:

Bill O'Reilly had Senator Tom Coburn on his show to address derisive comments he made last week towards Fox News. Coburn had told constituents upset with the recently passed health care reform that “the intention is not to put any one in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX.” O’Reilly pushed back hard, insisting that nobody on FNC has ever said “you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance” Well, he’s wrong.

Senator Coburn’s comments made some news when, particularly coming off similar comments from conservative David Frum, who claimed that “Fox News…has an interest In marginalizing the GOP.” At the time we asked if this was the start of a larger trend of GOP officials distancing themselves from Fox News.

Well not only has that not become a trend, but Coburn was effectively taken to the wood shed for his comments by Bill O’Reilly. The civil discussion was spirited at times, but O’Reilly’s primary point was that nobody on Fox News has claimed that not following health care would result in prison time:

“We researched to find if anyone on Fox News ever said you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance…nobody’s ever said it…so it seems to be what you did was you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn’t qualify there.”