O'Reilly agreed with guest's false claim that Boston Globe did not cover child-rape case

O'Reilly agreed with guest's false claim that Boston Globe did not cover child-rape case

http://mediamatters.org/items/200702230003

On the February 20 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly agreed with attorney Wendy Murphy's false claim that The Boston Globe "didn't cover" the Massachusetts case of Patrick Doyle, who was given a one-year jail sentence for failing to stop the repeated rape of a 9-year-old girl. Murphy, who is a frequent O'Reilly Factor guest and the former assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts, attributed the purported lack of coverage of such cases to the media's "classic liberal left ideology. ... It's always bad to lock somebody up. Punishment is bad." In fact, the Globe did report on Doyle's case and the reaction to his sentence. In a February 17 article, the Boston Globe reported:

The one-year sentence in a house of correction given a man who did nothing to stop the repeated rape of a 9-year-old girl has prompted a state senator to draft a bill to increase the maximum penalty in such cases.

"This is outrageous, and someone has to do something," said Senator Bruce Tarr, Republican of Gloucester, reacting to the sentencing Monday of Patrick Doyle, 42, of Salem.

Doyle was sentenced after being convicted of child endangerment in connection with accusations that a Beverly woman, Mary Jean Armstrong, allowed two men to have sex with her daughter in exchange for cocaine. Doyle was accused of doing nothing to stop the assault taking place several feet away from him.

From the February 20 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

MURPHY: Well, I think, from a political media perspective, it is absolutely right. You say it all the time that the classic liberal left ideology is anti-state, anti-prosecution. It's always bad to lock somebody up. Punishment is bad. That ideology trumps almost everything else. But what I dislike about the media's political bias is they're also supposed to be minding the business of the government, right? And the government has a responsibility to protect, especially defenseless kids, who have no power, no voice, no money -- they don't vote. And that the media has fallen down on the job about.

And you really are the only one in the media stepping up to the plate. But I condemn, especially the print media, for overindulging this classic liberal left ideology that it's always bad --

O'REILLY: But, it's not over an overindulging, they're involved in it. The Boston Globe didn't do one report on Vermont, as far as we know. Not one.

MURPHY: They also didn't -- they also didn't cover that Doyle case last week. The Boston Herald did --

O'REILLY: Right.

MURPHY: -- and the Globe didn't touch it, and that was an outrage.

O'REILLY: Right -- where a man stood by and watched a 9-year-old girl get raped, and the judge, Lila Kern, in Massachusetts, gave the man one year in prison for allowing --

MURPHY: Wait --

O'REILLY: -- allowing a little girl to be raped. The guy stood there and watched it -- he gets a year.

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:shrug: