J$P Instant Transcript! Bill O'Reilly talks to Hugh Hewitt about Blog payola. Updated!

From The O'Reilly Factor, January 14 2005:

BILL O'REILLY [FOX NEWS]: Unresolved Problems segment tonight, media being paid by special interests. Last week I spoke with conservative commentator Armstrong Williams who took money from the Department of Education, which was flat-out wrong. Now comes word from the Wall Street Journal that the Presidential campaign of Howard Dean paid two internet bloggers to say positive things about the governor. Again, flat-out wrong. Joining us now from Orange, California, is radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, the author of the book Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that Is Changing Your World. You know, I think this is just the beginning of this. This is like the 50s, when DJs were being paid to play records on the radio. You're going to see more and more of this kind of stuff, where political campaigns and people like that are buying quasi-journalists, bloggers, radio people, for good publicity. Do you disagree?

HUGH HEWITT [AUTHOR]: No, Bill. In fact, the idea of payola is very dangerous. Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging of real journalists, and people like Power Line and like InstaPundit and myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Daily Kos says, this is one of the bloggers from the left, says he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who watches him. I didn't know.

O'REILLY: Aw, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.

HEWITT: That's right.

O'REILLY: And this comes from a woman, Zephyr Teachout, who was the head of internet outreach for Dean's campaign. She's admitting she paid these two guys, all right, $3,000 a month, and they just threw nice stuff about Dean. Then you've got George Soros, he's paying a lot more than that to have these defamation websites that attack people all day long. Then you've got guys pumping Air America, that radio network. That's not profitable; that's running on money from some crazy left-wing nut. And, I mean, it's getting out of control, is it not?

HEWITT: Well, it can't be controlled because it's the first amendment. But we do have to be aware that there are people who are credible in the blogosphere, there are people who can be respected, who earn trust and deserve it, whether it's guys like at the RNC and the DNC that were accredited bloggers. Like Captain's Quarters, like Instapundit--people who belong there because they're good journalists and they're careful with their facts. But there are some bad actors out there. In the book I write about something called Black Blog Ops. These are people who operate websites and blogs for purposes which are to destroy, not to build up. But for every one of those there are 20 that are good. There's Roger L Simon, Bill; he's a fine, fine film director on the West Coast. Very persuasive in his writing. He's not on the take to anyone; I'm not on the take to anyone. Glenn Reynolds, the Professor at University of Tennessee, he's not on the take to anyone. It's a sorting out process.

O'REILLY: All right, so you're saying to me, I hope you're right, you're saying to me that there are far more honest voices on the internet than corrupt people. Is that what you're saying?

HEWITT: Of course. There's a World newspaper, which is a tabloid, and then there's Brit Hume. There's a lot of difference in between. There are bad bloggers, and there are very smart bloggers.

O'REILLY: All right, but here's the danger, and I've just been through this, OK? You've got websites, as you call them Black Ops websites, who will print defamation. All right, that's what they're in the business to do. They'll fabricate stuff, they'll make stuff up, they print it. Then they call up their contact at Any Newspaper USA, because they all have contacts in the straight media. Those people, usually in gossip columns, where they can run blind items, they don't have to source, then they print it. Then the Today Show, Good Morning America, all the cables, see it. They talk about it, talk radio sees it, they talk about it, all of a sudden it's true.

HEWITT: Sure, but Bill there are--

O'REILLY: So you've got a defamation pipeline right into Middle America.

HEWITT: But that happens in the mainstream media too. That happens at broadcast networks. Look what RatherGate did.

O'REILLY: Yes.

HEWITT: The Mapes thing was a hit on George W Bush. Look at Howell Raines and Jayson Blair. Look at the fact that the bloggers brought down Trent Lott, they exposed John Kerry on his Christmas Eve in Cambodia fantasy. There's a lot of good and bad; it's all just media, it's all just reporters.

O'REILLY: All of that's good, right. All of that is good, but I'm telling you there aren't any rules any more, and that's what frightens me.

HEWITT: No, but there's self-correction.

O'REILLY: Look, I operate under rules here, Hugh. If I say something defamatory, I get sued.

HEWITT: Yup.

O'REILLY: If I say something irresponsible, NewsCorp pulls me off the air. It happened to Michael Savage over at MSNBC. Pulled him right off the air--

HEWITT: Yup.

O'REILLY: --all right, after that crazy thing he said. Internet's not like that. No rules. Last word.

HEWITT: Oh well no, no no. The person who gets pulled off the air is the reader that you lose. If you lose your credibility as Blog discusses, you'll lose your audience. GM is blogging now.

O'REILLY: No, but you're not going to lose credibility if you smear people. People like to read smear stuff.

HEWITT: The Vice-Chairman of GM started blogging last week. If he says something wrong, he will lose credibility with his shareholders. All of business is going to start blogging, Bill, because it's the way to communicate. It's the way of the future. You can't throw away your credibility.

O'REILLY: OK, Hugh Hewitt, thanks very much. We appreciate it.

HEWITT: Thanks, Bill.

Update: Mistranscribed dollar figure referenced by O'Reilly corrected.
Update II: Thanks to all, for this: