For Bill O’Reilly and Fox News, a Symbiotic Relationship

The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly aggressively defended his Falklands coverage earlier in his career after reports surfaced that he had embellished stories about his war reporting.

Hours after the news broke that Brian Williams had misrepresented his account of a helicopter trip in Iraq, he issued an on-air apology. NBC News started an investigation, and within days had suspended Mr. Williams, calling his actions “wrong and completely inappropriate.”

When the magazine Mother Jones reported that Bill O’Reilly had engaged in self-aggrandizing rhetoric about his coverage of the Falklands war, he called one of the authors of the article “an irresponsible guttersnipe” and used his nightly show to fight back against his accusers. His bosses at Fox News, including the chief executive, Roger Ailes, rallied to his defense.

Fox’s handling of the controversy says a lot about the network. It also says a lot about its most visible star, a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the parameters and tenor of Fox News, in the process ushering in a new era of no-holds-barred, intentionally divisive news coverage.

Since dethroning CNN’s Larry King as the king of cable news almost 14 years ago, Mr. O’Reilly has helped transform a start-up news channel into a financial juggernaut, with estimated annual profits of more than $1 billion. He and Fox News have risen not on the back of big interviews or high-impact investigations but on the pugnacious brand of conservatism personified by Mr. O’Reilly.

His popularity may not be built on his credibility as a news anchor, but Mr. O’Reilly’s audience is loyal, and the current flap seems unlikely to damage his reputation among his fans.

It could have the opposite effect. On Monday night, when Mr. O’Reilly addressed the controversy on the air, his audience was more than 10 percent larger than the previous week.

“The viewers of Fox are more apt to dismiss this as an unfair attack on their beloved anchor,” said Mark Feldstein, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland.

Alexandra Alter contributed reporting.

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The New York Times