The Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O'Reilly

In the wake of the loss of TV's top anchormen, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Ted Koppel, a seismic shift has occurred in broadcast news. A revolution had already been taking place on the Fox News Channel about the way news was being presented on TV. Bill O'Reilly has been the spearhead in that radical movement, masterminded by Roger Ailes, founding father of Fox News.
To some, O'Reilly is a semi-demented cable TV talk show host, who can be an obnoxious, insufferable, opinionated, rude loudmouth whose views, the kinder ones say, are typical right wing drivel. But there is much more to O'Reilly than what meets eye. O'Reilly is the paradigm of idosyncrasy in television journalism.

On the rough road to the top, O'Reilly learned how to give the public what it wants and thinks it needs. From his early education at the hands of nuns to an advanced degree in Public Policy from Harvard, from working at local televisions stations and rising through the ranks to network news, O'Reilly spent nearly twenty-five years learning his craft before he became an overnight star at Fox News.
In this very intimate look at the man and what matters to him, veteran media critic Marvin Kitman explores all the experiences that led to the making of Bill O'Reilly--a non-conformist in a business that demands conformity as the price of success and a man who has risen to the top by not playing by the rules of broadcast news. Kitman claims that O'Reilly is not a kneejerk conservative, but an "independent" freethinker with a mind of his own, and he believes what journalism needs is more Bill O'Reillys. Not screamers, the blowhards like the current O'Reilly clones rushed on the air since his success, but trained journalists, reporting the news and telling us why, in their opinion, the world is a crazy place.

Supported by twenty-nine interviews with Bill O'Reilly, Marvin Kitman pulls no punches in this powerful and hard-hitting biography that will provoke both "Spinheads" and "Anti-Spinheads."