NEW YORK, March 1, 2004 -- It's long been apparent that Bill O'Reilly is a liar and a fraud.

A liar because this denizen of a self-styled "No Spin Zone" consistently spins supposed "facts" about his background and upbringing so as to buttress the phony "working class hero" status that made him a multimillionaire.

A fraud because he masquerades as a journalist, hosting a supposedly fair and balanced "news program," while actually performing as a fairly unbalanced and highly opinionated (albeit entertaining) advocate for conservative issues and ideas.

A case in point: last April, I was invited to appear as a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor," the top-rated cable show O'Reilly anchors. The topic: How well is the British Broadcasting Corporation reporting the war on Iraq?

But when I refused to characterize the BBC as the "Baghdad" Broadcasting Corporation during a "pre-interview" with the program's booker, I was promptly dis-invited by Mr. Bill himself, who. I was told, "has the final say over who comes on the show."

I subsequently wrote about the incident in the trade journal Television Week. Rather than responding to my charges that the program was rigged to present only a certain point of view, a Fox spokesman answered instead with this ad hominem attack: "Feel free to print this trash, just another person trying to generate publicity for themselves (sic) off of O'Reilly. We are not going to dignify this with a response."

Now it becomes clear that O'Reilly is a thief as well, who stole an exclusive investigative story broken in the pages of the recently launched free daily amNewYork, and presented it as his own. The front page exclusive, which concerned a charity fund organized to reopen Lady Liberty, ran on February 2. It revealed that although the fund raised $40 million annually, officials were using the money for minor maintenance instead of the $7 million in repairs necessary to reopen the monument to the public.

Two weeks later O'Reilly's researcher, Susan Beachy, called amNewYork and asked for a copy of the article. Alex Storozynski, amNewYork editor, followed up with O'Reilly's producer Rich McCue, who told him, "We know you guys broke this storyŠWe haven't seen it anywhere else."

To Storozynski's surprise, however, no mention was made of his newspaper when the story appeared on The O'Reilly Factor. Instead O'Reilly took credit for it himself. As Storozynski later wrote to O'Reilly, "Even the Daily News has given us credit when we break a story, and they are one of our competitors."

If his viewers don't yet know how dishonest O'Reilly is, his staff seems well aware of his ethically challenged behavior. Asked why O'Reilly didn't credit amNewYork, McCue said: "I can't tell him what to do. That's the way he operates."

Fox representatives failed to return several of my phone calls. But when contacted by Lloyd Grove of the Daily News, spokesman Rob Zimmerman dismissed Storozynski's complaints, simply asserting, "There is no plagiarism. Our friends at amNewYork are claiming that they broke this story. But they weren't the first ones to bring it to the public's attention."

Zimmerman must be taking honesty lessons from O'Reilly, because amNewYork undoubtedly had the story first. Instead of acknowledging the truth, however, Zimmerman responded as usual --with an attack -- telling Grove "amNewYork is trying to get publicity off of Bill O'Reilly's coattails."

Oh, really? No-O'Reilly!

-- Rory O'Connor of MediaChannel.org writes a weekly column on the media for AM New York. Read other columns by O'Connor.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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