Two night's ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's excellent investigative news program, "the Fifth Estate," broadcast a one-hour special on the hijacking of the American media by conservative bullies -- whose knowledge of foreign policy seems to run the gamut from A to B and tends toward scream-o-ramas in which dissenters are accused of being unpatriotic. They aired this clip:
Heather Mallick, Globe & Mail columnist had this sparring contest with Bill O'Reilly about his efforts to start an American boycott on Canada.
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O'Reilly: then Americans are going to take action. Are you willing to accept that boycott which will hurt your economy, drastically.
MALLICK: I don't think for a moment such a boycott would take place because we are your biggest trading partners.
O'REILLY: No, it will take place, madam. In France ...
MALLICK: I don't think that your French boycott has done too well ...
O'REILLY: ...they've lost billions of dollars in France according to "The Paris Business Review."
MALLICK: I think that's nonsense
The U.S. and Canada are the two biggest trading partners in the world. As for The U.S. economic boycott of France... dispite O'Reilly's comments to the contrary since he jumped on that bandwagon two years ago; French/American trade actually went up. And the Paris Business Review O'Reilly quoted; to the best of our knowlege no such publication exists.
So the point of the story is: if you have no facts, just make em' up.
Media Matters has more information here
