FNC's Bill O'Reilly Rips WaPo Over Conflict of Interest

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has accused The Washington Post of a “huge conflict of interest” over a series of columns published in the newspaper about O’Reilly’s book, “Killing Reagan.”

The newspaper’s columnist George Will has accused O’Reilly of slandering Reagan and, with co-author Martin Dugard, writing a book that “will distort public understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency more than hostile but conscientious scholars could.”

But as TVNewser first reported last week, none of the Post’s columns have disclosed the newspaper’s ties to the people working to protect Reagan’s legacy:

"The WaPo’s publisher and chief executive officer, Fred Ryan. Ryan was an advisor to President Reagan and served as his chief of staff after leaving the White House. He’s currently chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. As one industry insider quipped to TVNewser, “Fred continues to thread the needle on his conflict of interest career.”

Will has called O’Reilly “an expert on actively misleading people,” and O’Reilly has described Will (to his face) as a “hack” who is “in with the cabal of the Reagan loyalists who don’t want the truth to be told.”

But, according to TV Newser,  as The Washington Post’s columnists have repeatedly questioned O’Reilly, they have never found time to mention their own publisher’s ties to those very “Reagan loyalists.”

The bad blood between the Will and O’Reilly has so far filled two columns by Will in the Washington Post, a video produced by the newspaper’s video team, columns by two other Post reporters, and one very fiery segment featuring Will on The O’Reilly Factor.