Bill O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly (born September 10, 1949, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American conservative political commentator, television and radio personality, and author who was best known for hosting the Fox News Channel (FNC) program The O’Reilly Factor and, prior to that, coanchoring the syndicated tabloid television news program Inside Edition.

O’Reilly grew up on Long Island, New York, and attended Marist College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1971. After teaching high school for two years, he enrolled at Boston University, where he graduated with a master’s degree in broadcast journalism in 1976. For the next four years O’Reilly worked as a television newscaster for local stations around the country, including in Dallas, Denver, Scranton (Pennsylvania), and other cities in the Northeast. In 1980 he relocated to New York City, where he anchored his own show for WCBS. In 1982 he became a CBS network news correspondent. He left after a dispute with the network and joined ABC News in 1986 as a reporter for ABC World News Tonight. In 1989 O’Reilly joined Inside Edition as a senior correspondent, but within weeks he became the show’s coanchor and served in that capacity until 1995. At that time O’Reilly enrolled at Harvard University, earning a master’s degree in public administration.

In 1996 O’Reilly joined the Fox News Channel to anchor his own show, originally called The O’Reilly Report. The program soon moved to a more prominent time slot and was renamed The O’Reilly Factor. As the Emmy Award-winning host of that show, O’Reilly enjoyed widespread fame and consistently high ratings. His outspokenness and aggressive interviewing style helped to define the FNC brand and to solidify his cultivated image as a gruff plainspoken commentator.

While at FNC, O’Reilly faced allegations of sexual harassment, and in April 2017 The New York Times reported that more than $10 million had been paid to settle various lawsuits, though O’Reilly denied any wrongdoing. The news came amid a growing sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, which included the 2016 resignation of FNC Pres. Roger Ailes, who had been sued for inappropriate behaviour. Several weeks after The New York Times article was published—and amid additional harassment accusations—O’Reilly left the channel.

O’Reilly was also a syndicated columnist and a best-selling author. An early foray into fiction, Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television (1998), gave way to a series of tracts reiterating his opposition to what he saw as the negative impact of “secular-liberal” thinking in American life. Among those volumes were The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, Bad, and Completely Ridiculous in American Life (2000), Who’s Looking Out for You? (2003), Culture Warrior (2006), Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama (2010), and Old School: Life in the Sane Lane (2017; cowritten with Bruce Feirstein). In The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America (2019), O’Reilly wrote about U.S. Pres. Donald Trump.A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity (2008) is a memoir charting the development of O’Reilly’s political ideology.

With Martin Dugard, O’Reilly wrote the popular Killing series, which began with the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy in Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever (2011; television film 2013) and Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot (2012; television film 2013), respectively. Later installments included Killing Jesus: A History (2013), a biography of Jesus of Nazareth; Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General (2014), an investigation of the demise of U.S. Gen. George Patton; Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency (2015), a chronicle of the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan and its effects on the presidency; Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan (2016); Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence (2017), about the American Revolution; Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History (2018), which centres on Nazi hunters and their search for such World War II fugitives as Josef Mengele; Killing Crazy Horse: The Merciless Indian Wars in America (2020), an account of the confrontations between Native Americans and U.S. settlers as the latter moved west; Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America (2021); and Killing the Legends: The Lethal Danger of Celebrity (2022), about Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali.

In addition, O’Reilly penned several volumes for younger readers, some of them adapted from his other books.

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe