On Monday’s “Daily Show,” host Jon Stewart did a segment on Bill O’Reilly’s support of celebrities’ right to privacy. Stewart played several clips O’Reilly railing against paparazzi and defending the right to privacy. O’Reilly is seen saying, “The right to privacy is a basic Constitutional tenet and that is not ridiculous at all” and “We hate those paparazzi, and we think they’re the scum of the earth.” Stewart agrees that “the individual’s right to privacy is Constitutionally protected.”

But, Stewart then shows several Fox News clips of O’Reilly or his Fox co-workers harassing people with whom O’Reilly disagrees. In one clip, the editor of Columbia Journalism Review refused an interview with “The O’Reilly Factor,” but O’Reilly says a Factor producer “caught up with him on a bus” and harassed the editor on camera. O’Reilly is proud of these exchanges and even had a “Best Ambushes” segment.

Stewart says, “I think my favorite part about ‘The Factor’ is that they have no trouble reconciling their defense of celebrities’ right to privacy with their intimidation of everyone else,” noting that the Columbia Journalism Review segment came right before a segment criticizing paparazzi for chasing celebrities. Of course, the “Daily Show” segment is much funnier than this partial recap, so I urge you to go here to see the video.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Civil liberties, Identification. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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