[DeltAlum]

Anchor begins criticism of Gore only 40 seconds into speech. Fellow FOX commentator would have done it differently. O'Reilly "quotes" Teresa...

""The newspaper pinheads claim that because we (Fox News) aren't covering the speeches we aren't fair. That, of course: a bunch of baloney. . . How desperate some in the print media are to smear Fox News. In the words of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the newspaper critics can shove it."
- BILL O'REILLY, responding to Howard Kurtz on O'Reilly's criticism of Al Gore's speech before Gore finished his speech"

Here are part of Brit Hume's comments:

"But sometimes even pinheads have a point, as some Fox staffers, both publicly and privately, acknowledge.

"I don't know if that was the right call or not," says Brit Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, who replayed a few minutes of the Gore speech two hours after O'Reilly passed it up. "At that point we were in a program that is principally about one man's analysis. It wasn't part of our live coverage. If it had been my hour, I'd have done it. Bill O'Reilly chose not to do it. It's his program."

On Tuesday, O'Reilly interrupted an interview with Jerry Brown to listen to about four minutes of Ted Kennedy's 25-minute address. On Wednesday, he took Al Sharpton for two minutes of a 20-minute speech, interjecting: "That's our pal Sharpton, doing what Al does. He's whipping them up."

Frankly, I think this is preposterous. Even if O'Reilly did read the speech in advance, if you begin covering something, you owe it to the audience to make it's own judgement. 40 seconds isn't enough to do that.