Posted on 10/27/2015 6:47:41 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
A Central New York college is under fire for kicking Fox News Channel off campus after questions about the school's alleged "liberal bias."
Bill O'Reilly spoke Monday night about a recent Cornell Sun newspaper report that claimed 96 percent of the more than $600,000 in political donations from Cornell University faculty went to Democratic candidates. Only 15 of 323 donors gave money to "conservative" politicians, the Fox News host said.
O'Reilly complained that it didn't seem diverse enough, so he sent "O'Reilly Factor" producer and reporter Jesse Watters to ask professors and students if they thought there was a liberal "indoctrination" on campus.
"What's the vibe on campus?" Watters asked during the "Watters World" segment.
"A very diverse campus – a bunch of different people from a bunch of different backgrounds," one male student said.
"It's not that diverse, because according to this report, 96 percent of the donations from faculty here went to Democrats," Watters shot back.
"What's wrong with that?" the student replied as Watters chortled.
Eventually, the network came head-to-head with Cornell's media relations department. Deputy director of media relations Melissa Osgood asked Watters not to interview students on the Ithaca campus.
"Cornell doesn't have a problem with Fox News, does it?" Watters asked.
"Absolutely not," Osgood said.
John Carberry, the Ivy League school's senior director of media relations, also asked Fox News to leave campus but declined to give a reason on camera.
"Are you choosing not to articulate the reason, or you don't have a reason?" Watters asked.
Watters later said he received a statement that didn't give a explanation for turning Fox News away: "It just says Cornell does not consider a person's political stance in its hiring practices."
Cornell first aroused curiosity at Fox News when the Sun found the vast majority of faculty political donations over the past four years went to Democrats. When asked about a lack of political diversity, government professor Andrew Little suggested to the student publication that hiring Republicans would compromise the quality of education.
"Placing more emphasis on diversity of political beliefs when hiring [would] almost certainly require sacrificing on general quality or other dimensions of diversity," Little said.
Still, before being ejected, Watters managed to ask students if they had been "indoctrinated" by throwing out questions about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, the national debt and whether building a wall on the Mexico border is a good idea.
"They hated you," O'Reilly told Watters after the segment.
"They told me the real reason they didn't want you on campus," O'Reilly mused. "You had mittens... That offended almost everybody."
They also get a substantial amount of our taxes!!!
That’s my experience, too.
Cornell (sadly, my Mother’s and her father’s Alma Mater) only regrets that they can’t ship them off to a gulag.
If FOX and other non-leftist media continue reporting on the liberal bias at universities and other government supported organizations we will see attempts to restrict access to the incriminating data.
So that means they MUST allow Fox News, a private news organization, to record on their campus for commercial purposes?
And lacrosse.
SILENCE!! Don’t you dare question me...
Most universities are exactly like this. About 96% liberal seems to be the average.
Pretty much the same could be said for primary and secondary education. Seems like too few want to fix it though.
I missed the segment last night. I didn’t know Jesse had Mittens with him. Romney accompanied him to campus?
‘When asked about a lack of political diversity, government professor Andrew Little suggested to the student publication that hiring Republicans would compromise the quality of education’
REALLY? Because, you know, like, Democrats are soooo much more intelligent ,right? I hope that many Cornell Alums decide their Alma Mater isn’t the place to send their money or their kids anymore. The Ivy League seems to be more like the Poison Ivy league, when it comes to Education.
They do provide a “ quality education” though, as evidenced by the dimwit female who said the national debt was 200 million dollars.
“Why aren’t Conservatives considered a disenfranchised minority.”
That’s a good question. Let’s ask a Jew, or an Asian.
Thanks for posting. I don’t watch Fox News Channel, but I watched the whole clip, and had a good laugh.
I'm not sure that they can keep the press out. I know that if anyone went to Fox News and behaved in a way that Fox News didn't like, security would toss them. I'm not sure that a college campus has the same degree of freedom in excluding people.
“So that means they MUST allow Fox News, a private news organization, to record on their campus for commercial purposes?”
Cornell is a hybrid university, part private and part “public” (taxpayer-supported). The public part would have a difficult time defending its expulsion of a news organization from campus, especially if it has in the past given other news organizations access to campus. First Amendment and all that.
Two points:
1) Why would they? Fox is just as Elitist/Establishment as MSNBC!
2) This is Soviet Union behavior. Lysenkoism, anyone?
“Pretty much the same could be said for primary and secondary education. Seems like too few want to fix it though.”
True, but where do they get the endless supply of Marxist teachers for primary and secondary education? Answer: Our universities and colleges. So we need to dry up this point of supply.
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