the difference is that bill does his thing and keith is desperate to move out of his shadow and continually defines himself as being in opposition to bill as opposed to just being keith...what a sad cack sukka.

I agree with those who say it wouldn't work since their egos are too big to allow any type of defeat. What scares me the most is your fanboism for PTI. I've never read or seen anybody get that excited for PTI. I guess you're their audience. Wilbon and Kornheiser have been around for a while and the WaPo is my home paper, but their knowledge is limited and on national shows they play characters more than they comment. I'm not sure Tony K has ever watched and we know he doesn't watch sports now. Does Kornheiser even write anymore. Wilbon has a slightly off-base article in the Post every now and then.

This wouldn't work at all. O'Reilly (and everyone else) would drag the guy on at the end to make one or two minor nitpick (hey you got a few years wrong there, off by 1-2), and leave a lot unchallenged.

I just wanted to chime in and say I am a loyal ATH/PTI watcher. I record them every day and usually start watching as soon as I get home from work. I tried recording several daily type shows like Colbert but always found myself falling behind. Yet somehow I always make time for those two shows. Fear the 'Drow!

O'Reilly and Olbermann should not be taken serious as reporters because that's not their job. Their job is simply to get ratings by pandering to a particular segment of the cable news audience (hyperpartisan left and right), sell commercials and raise the stock prices of Newscorp and GE.

The problem is that Olbermann and O'Reilly aren't news reporters, they're commentators. They constantly editorialize, which is the worst possible thing you can do in journalism. That's how they get away with being inaccurate.

Although it makes more sense in Olbermann's favor, because his show is atleast comedic in general, whereas O'Reilly's is just an hour of him passing gas through his mouth.

...Because O'Reilly would need an hour and a half of factual corrections for every hour he was on the air. And he'd be yelling at and arguing with the "stat boy" all the way through. In fact, forget it--he'd have the guy's microphone turned off 45 seconds into it.
Olbermann goes out of his way to point out his own mistakes, either later in the show or as a "worst person" segment on a following show.

First off, Olbermann spends most of his show interviewing. When he isn't, he's scripted. Its a different format than PTI where they are at least trying to seem spontanious in their banter, and I tend to buy into the idea that while they prepare for the questions that they do answer organically. As such, there is more opportunity to get details wrong, so they have Riali around to keep them honest. A scripted show shouldn't need that because things should be vetted ahead of time.

When that vetting process fails, Olbermann has called attention to it in the show. Usually in the popular "Worst Person" segment which ensures that it gets seen by casual viewers. He's used this both for when he's gotten the facts wrong AND when he feels he acted journalistically irressponisble. I think this fulfills this need in a reasonable manner. Given the nature of the material, if errors come up, the can't be caught on the fly the way PTI does. Anything that could be, should have been caught ahead of time.

A couple of things, first, politics isn't about truth, its about changing the status quo. Fox knows this and puts people on their air space that can bend the "truth", i.e. facts, to support their arguments for making the country more conservative (changing the status quo). Politics isn't about stats that can be fact checked or referenced at the end of the show by a stat boy. That's not to say that it can't, but that's not the goal in politics. And actually, Olbermann does issue "editorial corrections" on his show the next day. There is also a show called Verdict with Dan Abrams on MSNBC that goes through misstatements of the candidates and pundits. But these shows are rare, as the media really tends to get swept up more in the "story" of politics. And it's the party's/candidates job to make sure the media is telling their story. not their opponent's. But that brings us to Colbert and his sheer brilliance of truthiness. He's tapped into the fundamental idea of spin in politics, that you can always spin something said or a fact to suit your political agenda. He does it so outrageously to get laughs, but others do it in a serious way. Finally, EsPN orginial programming sucks, and PTI, while perhaps the least offensive of these shows, is substandard ranting by two sports writers that have at best a peripheral knowledge of what is actually going on in sports. And stat boy Tony Reali is a tool.

As I recall, Bill O'Reilly has Laurie Dhue as his ombudsman, but I actually can't recall the last time I saw her on the show...I believe she has a slot in the Thursday show.

Red Eye with Greg Gutfield is a great show, just too bad it comes on so late and a lot of people don't catch it. Their use of Andy Levy as ombudsman is part factual correction, part comedy relief is clever.