Arianna: Wouldn’t surprise me if O’Reilly had staffer put offensive comments on HuffPost so he’d have something to rail against.
As I arrived at the ballroom of the Omni Shorehem hotel in Washington yesterday to give a speech at the Take Back America conference, I was approached by one of Bill O’Reilly’s video crews, looking to do an ambush interview about objectionable anonymous comments that appeared on our site (comments that we unequivocally repudiate and take down as soon as we become aware of them; more on this in a moment).
O’Reilly has been banging this tired drum — calling me no different from Nazis and the KKK — for weeks now and is giddily promoting yesterday’s exchange on his website as “An Explosive Showdown. We confront the Huffington Post over Tony Snow comments.” (It will apparently air tonight).
My first response to the Fox hit squad was that they needed a lesson on the rudiments of how the Internet works, especially when it comes to comments.
HuffPost gets around 500,000 comments a month. These comments are anonymous and in no way represent my opinions, or the opinions of HuffPost or our bloggers. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to abusive or hateful language or comments — such comments are taken down as quickly as they come to the attention of our moderators.