For more than 50 years, this TV legend has been “doing it live” and setting records with his book series. The latest book from Bill O’Reilly, Confronting Evil: Assessing the Worst of the Worst, is no different, as it marks the anchor’s 20th book to top the New York Times best-sellers list.
In his new book, O’Reilly focuses on some of the worst humans to ever walk the earth. “We’re talking about Putin, Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mao Zedong,” O’Reilly told Barrett Media, before noting that there is not a single woman named in the book. He says it’s because he could not “find one to come close to [the evil] these guys [have done].”
The host of No Spin News, which airs on The First, believes his book is not just about history but also correlates to events happening in the news cycle today.
“Obviously, Putin is a threat to the world; he has nuclear weapons, he’s a psychopath, and he employs hurting people,” the radio and TV host declared. “I think he would use those weapons if his back were against the wall. So that’s a threat to everybody.”
He added, “Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor is worse than he was. They fund and fuel terrorism worldwide, particularly in Gaza and large constituencies. All of the people that we talk about are, like, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Their legacies are being carried out now in some form or another.”
But you don’t have to be evil to leave a legacy. O’Reilly’s influence in media is profound. From engaging storytelling skills and groundbreaking hard-news style to reaching across the political aisle to bridge divides within the United States, his presence has changed the mediascape forever. However, it’s not where his venture started when he was a young adult.
Straight out of Marist College (now Marist University), the young O’Reilly became a high school teacher in a ghetto in South Florida for two years before saying to himself, “You know, I really don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.”
His Irish blarney style and love of writing brought O’Reilly to Boston University, where he received his master’s in broadcast journalism. “I started my career in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and I worked my way up to New York City, WCBS-TV, as a reporter, and along the way, I never gave up my love of reading books,” the TV legend recalled.
Bill O’Reilly, an avid reader with a passion for history, also always held insight into what was not particularly accurate in the history books he read: “So I swore to myself I can do better than that, I can write better books than that,” and he has.
“When I became famous at Fox, I decided to write Killing Lincoln,” O’Reilly recalled. “That was the first Killing book. I wrote a novel before that, but the Killing Lincoln series sold 3 million copies. Then we were on our way.”
Today, he is an independent journalist who runs three corporations. “But they’re not run like ABC or NBC, I don’t run them like that,” the veteran journalist said. “I give my people a lot of freedom. But they have the freedom to fail, too. I mean, you’ve got to do the job. I’ll give you a shot at it, I’ll pay you well, but you have to come through. And if you don’t, then we’ll find you something else.”
Going independent has also provided a better lifestyle for O’Reilly and his team, as they all work remotely. “For me, it’s much better, and it’s much better for my team that I don’t have to go into New York City every day. They are subjected to things beyond my control.”
One thing that is within O’Reilly’s control is keeping his work free from any ideology, unlike other media companies. “There are no standards in the media. It’s collapsed,” the radio host remarked. “But that helps me because I don’t do ideology, I don’t mislead, and I will not report anything that isn’t true. So people, when they see that, they gravitate toward me.”
He later added, “There’s nothing I can do about [the corrupt media] other than point it out, which I do.”
When pressed, O’Reilly said the media is not evil; they simply “want to make money.” The desire to make money does not help identify good and evil within the news cycle.
A good moral compass is essential to Bill O’Reilly’s life’s work. It’s also derived from the Bible. “I’m a Christian, and if you’re a Christian, you understand the theology,” he explained. “You know that the world was created with the tension between good and evil, and as a Christian, your mandate is to do good. And if you do that, you are rewarded. If you do evil, you are damned.”
“That’s why I mentioned Cain and Abel in Confronting Evil,” O’Reilly said. “Cain killed his brother, Abel, because he was jealous of him. That story is in the Bible for a reason.” He elaborated, “It spells out that we’re always going to have to deal with bad people, and now, in our current world, we’ve got a lot of people who refuse to do that.”
O’Reilly does not mean you need to confront armed criminals in the streets in order to defeat evil, but instead to be involved. “If there’s something wrong in your neighborhood, your town, even your family, you’ve got to try to mitigate. There’s a whole bunch of ways you can do it.”
“But you can’t look away, you can’t ignore it.” Building on this point, he expressed, “Evil isn’t defeated by cowards. You’ve got to stand up, but you don’t want to put yourself at risk. So, it’s a balancing act.”
For young people who are looking to follow in O’Reilly’s footsteps, he believes, “You’ve got to have discipline in what you’re doing. Not everybody’s cut out to be a journalist and to go to dangerous places.”
He added, “I put myself at risk a few times. A lot of people would never do that, and I don’t criticize that. But my personality is I’m a risk taker.”
What separated the leather-shoe journalist from his peers was, and still is, taking chances. “I covered wars, I went all over the world, including to 86 countries, because I knew this would lay the ground for success.”
“Basically, this was what I wanted to do with my life,” he added. “That’s important for every American to figure out.” To figure out what you should be doing on this earth, O’Reilly believes you first need to ask yourself, “Where is my God-given talent? Why? Because every human being has a special talent they’ve been blessed with. Then you figure out a way to make money and make a living, enjoying it!
“Number two, they’ve got to be realistic.”
Bill O’Reilly noted many young people today “want a giant house, they want a fancy car, but they want it now, and you’re not gonna get it now. You’re gonna have to work for it, save for it, and eventually, you will.
“But you’ve got to have a realistic view of what America is, a very competitive society. Nice things cost a lot of money. I mean, you’ve got to earn that money. But if you’re realistic and you’re honest, that’s another key component of success in life.”
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