Final Protective Fire

Friday, June 14, 2002

 

I was watching Bill O'Reilly this evening and became quite offended at this treatment of his guests. I wrote him the following:

Dear Mr. O'Reilly,

The concept of your show, that you are a "No Spin" zone is a laudable one. And it is appropriate for you to call your guests when they are "spinning". But it is not appropriate for you to abuse your guests when their actions are ethical. Tonight, you had two defense attorneys on your program who were both doing their jobs defending their clients. They were not engaging in any abusive or unethical actions, and yet you made attacks on their personal character. You owe them and your audience apologies for that conduct.

I am quite serious about this. If you don't think you owe those apologies, then you need to find someone to explain it to you over and over until you do understand.

By the way, you boldly proclaimed what "the law" was twice over the objections of attorneys and you could not have been more wrong. Any first year law student in the nation can tell you that negligence is not automatically criminal conduct no matter how loudly you proclaim it. Turley should have taken you apart on that but was obviously too polite. And ethical rules for lawyers in this majority of this country do not allow an attorney to refuse to defend someone merely from moral repugnance. The usual standard is moral repugnance that would prevent the attorney from acting competently in the matter.

While I approve of "no spin", you need to climb down off your high horse and stop abusing competent ethical attorneys who are your guests.

Robin 10:01 PM