Bill O’Reilly can be a tough pill to swallow at times. That said, I actually kinda like the guy. Not a lot, mind you, but kinda. Unlike some of the other conservative talking heads that slavishly adhere to the conservative agenda in zombie-like fashion, he’s got a bit of an independent streak that speaks to me. Nonetheless, like many of his fellow pundits, he has occasional bouts of hypocrisy on his show, The O’Reilly Factor, that are quite magnificent in their boldness, providing people like me with wonderful opportunities for new blog entries.
The first instance of hypocrisy that I’ll highlight was captured nicely by Jon Stewart last week when he weighed America’s right to privacy (which O’Reilly claims to champion) versus the Factor’s need to know:
The second example stems from O’Reilly’s strange fixation with Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric (GE). Actually, it’s not all that strange since GE is the parent company of NBC, with which Fox News has an ongoing tiff that rivals anything seen in South Central LA. So I guess that explains why O’Reilly routinely uses some of his airtime to blast all things Immelt, going so far as to call the guy a “disaster’ during yesterday’s broadcast. Besides the occasional gripe about business dealings with Iran, most of his vitriol relates to the horrible job that Immelt has done while at the helm of GE from a management perspective, pointing to the stock’s precipitous decline over the past couple years as evidence. He even pats himself on the back for predicting that the stock would reach $10, which it almost has. O’Reilly uses the stock’s poor performance to encourage GE shareholders to rise up against Immelt and get the bum out of his corner office. You know, since he’s such a bad steward and all.
Now, I know nothing about Immelt. He may very well suck as a manager. But O’Reilly’s obsession with tearing the man down got me thinking: How does Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation compare with GE? I ask this because News Corp. is the parent company of O’Reilly’s precious Fox News Channel. Surely, Murdoch has done a better job than Immelt, at least judging by his stock’s performance, right? Otherwise, there’s no way O’Reilly would be going out of his way to denigrate Immelt because that would represent the height of hypocrisy. Right?
Below is a Bloomberg screen grab that shows the trailing five-year comparative stock performance of News Corp. (white) and GE (green). Looks awfully similar, doesn’t it? Interestingly, News Corp. actually managed to slightly underperform GE during that period. Hmmm…
Of course, most of the declines took place in the brutal year that was 2008, during which time GE’s stock declined 54%….while News Corp.’s dropped 55%. To which I say again – Hmmm….
Recent operating results tell a similar story. Both companies reported horrendous numbers for the fourth quarter 2008 and both companies issued rather negative guidance for the upcoming fiscal year – the operative word here being both.
What about more traditional measures of management effectiveness? Well, GE’s return on equity over the past five years averaged 17%, which dwarfed News Corp.’s 10%. And Immelt’s company has been much more generous in returning excess cash to investors, evidenced by its 10.6% dividend yield compared to News Corp.’s paltry 1.8%.
So, in reality, O’Reilly’s complaints about the job Immelt has done could just as easily be applied to his boss, Murdoch. Has nobody pointed this out to O’Reilly? If not, he’s surrounded by morons. If so, it boggles my mind that he continues to pound away at this with a straight face. Cognitive dissonance on display.
