Dori Maynard, Diversity Champion, Dies at 56

Fox News Stands Behind O'Reilly on Embellishment Charges

"It's official: Fox News won't be debating every attack on the credibility of host Bill O'Reilly, who has spent several days fighting off allegations that he has embellished his exploits in foreign reportage over a long career in journalism,"Erik Wemple wrote Wednesday in his Washington Post media blog.

"In a statement to the Erik Wemple Blog, a Fox News spokesperson notes, 'Bill O'Reilly has already addressed several claims leveled against him. This is nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates Mother Jones and Media Matters. Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. FOX News maintains its staunch support of O'Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.'

"On Thursday, Mother Jones (where, disclosure-wise, the wife of the Erik Wemple Blog works), published a story questioning O'Reilly's claims to have braved 'combat' conditions in reporting on the Falkland Islands war. After days of shouting down those allegations, O'Reilly yesterday caught a Media Matters story alleging that he had lied about being nearby for the suicide of a Russian emigre who figured in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And today, Media Matters writes that O’Reilly never witnessed the execution of nuns in El Salvador in 1981, as he has claimed. . . ."

• David Bauder, Associated Press: Williams And O'Reilly Cases Diverge
  
  
• Paul Farhi, Washington Post: Crisis management, Fox News style: Bill O’Reilly goes for the jugular
  
  
• Hadas Gold, Politico: Media Matters: O'Reilly lied about Florida suicide
  
  
• Jonathan Mahler and Emily Steel, New York Times: Bill O’Reilly and Fox News: They’re in It Together
  
  
• Olivia Marshall, Media Matters for America: Another Fabrication: O'Reilly Never Witnessed The Murder Of Nuns In El Salvador (updated)
  
  
• Gabriel Sherman, New York: How Mother Jones’s Bill O'Reilly Story Backfired

Columnist Tells Fellow Whites About Unconscious Bias

"Supermarket shoppers are more likely to buy French wine when French music is playing, and to buy German wine when they hear German music. That's true even though only 14 percent of shoppers say they noticed the music, a study finds,"Nicholas Kristof wrote for Sunday's print edition of the New York Times.

"Researchers discovered that candidates for medical school interviewed on sunny days received much higher ratings than those interviewed on rainy days. Being interviewed on a rainy day was a setback equivalent to having an MCAT score 10 percent lower, according to a new book called 'Everyday Bias,' by Howard J. Ross.

"Those studies are a reminder that we humans are perhaps less rational than we would like to think, and more prone to the buffeting of unconscious influences. That's something for those of us who are white men to reflect on when we're accused of 'privilege.'

"White men sometimes feel besieged and baffled by these suggestions of systematic advantage. When I wrote a series last year, 'When Whites Just Don't Get It,' the reaction from white men was often indignant: It's an equal playing field now! Get off our case!

"Yet the evidence is overwhelming that unconscious bias remains widespread in ways that systematically benefit both whites and men. So white men get a double dividend, a payoff from both racial and gender biases.' . . . "