Journalism: You're Doing It Wrong

The sense of entitlement on display when Bill O'Reilly started shoving Obama staffers at a New Hampshire event would be breathtaking, if not for the fact that it was Bill O'Reilly.

In case you don't know the story, here's the short version: O'Reilly shows up to a packed campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire, late and with his full entourage and camera crew in tow. He bails off the press platforms and decides that the Factor deserves some facetime with Obama, so he slides around the press barricades (which are there to, I don't know, keep people out) and ends up in a part of venue that has decidedly not been set aside for press, along the corridor Obama will take to exit. O'Reilly asks a cop between him and Obama's path to move, which he does. Marvin Nicholson, Obama's national trip director, stands where the cop had been, in between Obama and O'Reilly's cameras. What happened next, you can probably imagine:

O'Reilly: Some guy comes over, he’s about six foot eight according to the press reports and he stands in front of the Factor camera. So I asked him fairly nicely, “you’re blocking our shot sir, you need to move a little bit.

...so I had to gently remove him from that position. No scuffle, I just moved him from the spot... I might have called him an SOB, that’s possible, nothing more than that. No one on this earth is going block a shot on the O’Reilly Factor. It is not going to happen.

But guess who got the business end of a stern talking-to in the aftermath? From the previously linked Lynn Sweet post:

Secret Service agents who were nearby flanked O 'Reilly after he pushed Nicholson. They told O'Reilly he needed to calm down and get behind the fence-like barricade that contained the press.

I guess it doesn't surprise me. I'm all for getting your shot and getting your story — we are, after all, professionals — but the bravado in the aftermath of shoving a guy around, the gall of saying "I just moved from the spot," as if he had the right to do so in the first place, really rubs me the wrong way. There's no justification for what O'Reilly did, but O'Reilly seems to think that he can more or less do whatever he wants. I do wonder if this experience will be educational for him, on the balance, that this is not always the case: apparently, there is someone on earth who can block a shot on the O'Reilly Factor, and they work for the Secret Service. He was apparently cooperative enough with them because he didn't end up with a face full of gym floor.

This problem, this wretched idea of all-pervading entitlement, seems to be most prevalent among the right's Fox Funhogs and their ilk, and O'Reilly is the worst offender. I'm still not sure how O'Reilly Factor shot priority trumps venue security or the natural order of How Things Are Supposed To Be Done, but I won't wait around to be told by O'Reilly about how it works. I think Slate's John Dickerson speaks for us all:

I have a confession. During the shoving, I found myself yelling at O'Reilly to grow up, which was thoroughly unprofessional, except that I have little kids and I think it's important to discipline misbehavior immediately. If I don't dare to discipline, they'll grow up to be like, well, Bill O'Reilly.