Bill O'Reilly

At 75 years old, Bill O'Reilly has this physical status:

O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring positions at WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he also reported the weather. At WFAA-TV in Dallas, O'Reilly was awarded the Dallas Press Club Award for excellence in investigative reporting. He then moved to KMGH-TV in Denver where he won a local Emmy Award for his coverage of a skyjacking. O'Reilly also worked for WFSB in Hartford, Connecticut from 1979 to 1980. In 1980, O'Reilly anchored the local news-feature program 7:30 Magazine at WCBS-TV in New York. Soon after, as a WCBS News anchor and correspondent, he won his second local Emmy, which was for an investigation of corrupt city marshals.

In 1982, he became a CBS News correspondent, covering the wars in El Salvador on location and in the Falkland Islands from his base in Buenos Aires, Argentina. O'Reilly left CBS over a dispute concerning the uncredited use in a report by Bob Schieffer of footage of a riot in response to the military junta's surrender shot by O'Reilly's crew in Buenos Aires shortly after the conclusion of the war.

After departing CBS News in 1982, O'Reilly joined WNEV-TV (now WHDH) in Boston, as a weekday reporter, weekend anchor and later as host of the station's local news magazine New England Afternoon. In 1984, O'Reilly went to KATU in Portland, Oregon, where he remained for nine months, then he returned to Boston and joined WCVB-TV as reporter and columnist-at-large for NewsCenter 5.

In 1986, O'Reilly moved to ABC News, where, during his three-year tenure, he received two Emmy Awards and two National Headliner Awards for excellence in reporting. He had delivered a eulogy for his friend Joe Spencer, an ABC News correspondent who died in a helicopter crash on January 22, 1986, en route to covering the 1985–86 Hormel strike. ABC News president Roone Arledge, who attended Spencer's funeral, decided to hire O'Reilly after hearing the eulogy. At ABC, O'Reilly hosted daytime news briefs that previewed stories to be reported on the day's World News Tonight and worked as a general assignment reporter for ABC News programs, including Good Morning America, Nightline, and World News Tonight.

In 1989, O'Reilly joined the nationally syndicated King World (now CBS Television Distribution)-produced Inside Edition, a tabloid-gossip television program in competition with A Current Affair. He became the program's anchor three weeks into its run after the involvement of original anchor David Frost had ended. In addition to being one of the first American broadcasters to cover the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, O'Reilly obtained the first exclusive interview with murderer Joel Steinberg and was the first television host from a national current affairs program on the scene of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

In 1995, former NBC News and CBS News anchor Deborah Norville replaced O'Reilly on Inside Edition; O'Reilly had expressed a desire to quit the show in July 1994.

On May 12, 2008, an outtake of O'Reilly ranting during his time at Inside Edition surfaced on YouTube. The early 1990s video depicts O'Reilly yelling and cursing at his co-workers while having issues pre-recording the closing lines on his teleprompter, eventually yelling the phrase "Fuck it, we'll do it live!" before continuing the closing segment to his show. The original video, titled "Bill O'Reilly Flips Out," was removed, but another user reuploaded it the day after and retitled it "Bill O'Reilly Goes Nuts". Immediately after the video surfaced, O'Reilly acknowledged the video's existence, claiming that he was amusing his co-workers and said "I have plenty of much newer stuff... If you want to buy the tapes that I have, I'm happy to sell them to you." The rant was later parodied by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report as well as Family Guy and by Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, and was named one of Time's "Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns". In October 2008, Wednesday 13 named his first live album after a line in the rant. In 2009, a "dance remix" of O'Reilly's rant was nominated for a Webby Award for "Best Viral Video" but lost to "The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude".

In October 1996, O'Reilly was hired by Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of the then startup Fox News Channel, to anchor The O'Reilly Report. The show was renamed The O'Reilly Factor after his friend and branding expert John Tantillo's remarks upon the "O'Reilly Factor" in any of the stories he told. The program was routinely the highest-rated show of the three major U.S. 24-hour cable news television channels and began the trend toward more opinion-oriented prime-time cable news programming. The show was taped late in the afternoon at a studio in New York City and aired every weekday on the Fox News Channel at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time and was rebroadcast at 11:00 p.m.

Progressive media monitoring organizations such as Media Matters and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting have criticized his reporting on a variety of issues, accusing him of distorting facts and using misleading or erroneous statistics. In 2008, citing numerous inaccuracies in his reporting, MediaMatters for America awarded him its first annual "Misinformer of the Year" award.

After the September 11 attacks, O'Reilly accused the United Way of America and American Red Cross of failing to deliver millions of dollars in donated money, raised by the organizations in the name of the disaster, to the families of those killed in the attacks. He reported that the organizations misrepresented their intentions for the money being raised by not distributing all of the 9/11 relief fund to the victims. Actor George Clooney responded, accusing him of misstating facts and harming the relief effort by inciting "panic" among potential donors.

On August 27, 2002, O'Reilly called for all Americans to boycott Pepsi products, saying that lyrics of Ludacris (then appearing in ads for Pepsi) glamorize a "life of guns, violence, drugs and disrespect of women". The next day, O'Reilly reported that Pepsi had fired Ludacris. Two years later, Ludacris referenced O'Reilly in the song "Number One Spot" with the lyrics "Respected highly, hi, Mr. O'Reilly/Hope all is well, kiss the plaintiff and the wifey," in reference to his sexual-harassment suit with Andrea Mackris while married. In an interview with RadarOnline.com in 2010, Ludacris said he and O'Reilly had made amends after a conversation at a charity event.

Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, he promised that "[i]f the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean [of weapons of mass destruction] ... I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." In another appearance on the same program on February 10, 2004, he responded to repeated requests for him to honor his pledge: "My analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'm not pleased about it at all." With regard to his trust in the government, he said, "I am much more skeptical of the Bush administration now than I was at that time."

Beginning in 2005, he periodically denounced George Tiller, a Kansas-based physician who specialized in second- and third-trimester abortions, often referring to him as "Tiller the baby killer". Tiller was murdered on May 31, 2009, by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist. Critics such as Salon's Gabriel Winant have asserted that his anti-Tiller rhetoric helped to create an atmosphere of violence around the doctor. Jay Bookman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that O'Reilly "clearly went overboard in his condemnation and demonization of Tiller" but added that it was "irresponsible to link O'Reilly" to Tiller's murder. O'Reilly responded to the criticism by saying "no backpedaling here ... every single thing we said about Tiller was true."

In early 2007, researchers from the Indiana University School of Journalism published a report that analyzed his "Talking Points Memo" segment. Using analysis techniques developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the study concluded that he used propaganda, frequently engaged in name calling, and consistently cast non-Americans as threats and never "in the role of victim or hero". He responded, asserting that "the terms 'conservative', 'liberal', 'left', 'right', 'progressive', 'traditional' and 'centrist' were considered name-calling if they were associated with a problem or social ill." The study's authors said that those terms were only considered name-calling when linked to derogatory qualifiers. Fox News producer Ron Mitchell wrote an op-ed in which he accused the study's authors of seeking to manipulate their research to fit a predetermined outcome. Mitchell argued that by using tools developed for examining propaganda, the researchers presupposed that he propagandized.

On April 19, 2017, Fox News announced that O'Reilly would not return to their primetime lineup amid public reporting on the tens of millions of dollars he paid to settle the sexual harassment claims of six women. The show continued, rebranded as The Factor, now hosted by Dana Perino. On the same day, Fox announced that Tucker Carlson's show would be airing an hour earlier to take over O'Reilly's position and that The Five will replace Carlson's usual time at 9 p.m. with a new co-host, Jesse Watters. After O'Reilly was fired, the financial markets responded positively to the decision by Fox News, and its parent company 21st Century Fox rose over two percent in the stock market the next day.

In April 2017, The New York Times reported that Fox News and O'Reilly had settled five lawsuits involving women who accused O'Reilly of misconduct. After the settlements were reported, the O'Reilly Factor lost more than half its advertisers within a week; almost 60 companies withdrew their television advertising from the show amid a growing backlash against O'Reilly. On April 11, O'Reilly announced he would take a two-week vacation and would return to the program on April 24; he normally took a vacation around Easter. On April 19, Fox News announced that O'Reilly would not be returning to the network. The program was subsequently renamed The Factor on April 19 and aired its last episode on April 21.

O'Reilly later stated his regret that he did not "fight back" against his accusers the way Sean Hannity did when facing the loss of advertisers around the same time.

O'Reilly launched a podcast called No Spin News on April 24, 2017, after his departure from Fox News. In August 2017, O'Reilly began digitally streaming a video version of No Spin News. In May 2017, O'Reilly began to appear as a recurring guest on Friday editions of the Glenn Beck Radio Program. In June 2017, O'Reilly and Dennis Miller co-headlined the public speaking tour, "The Spin Stops Here".

O'Reilly made his first appearance on Fox News since his ouster on September 26, 2017, being interviewed by Sean Hannity.

In 2019, O'Reilly started a 15-minute radio show, The O’Reilly Update.

By 2020, simulcasts of O'Reilly's No Spin News show began to air on Newsmax TV. No Spin News began airing on The First TV in June 2020.

O'Reilly participated in a speaking tour with former president Donald Trump in December 2021, which he said "[provided] a never before heard inside view of his administration".

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