Paul Mirengoff on The O'Reilly Factor

Here's the transcript: O'Reilly: In the Impact segment tonight, as you know Dan Rather left the CBS evening news over a story that questioned President Bush's National Guard Service. The source of that story proved to be bogus and the producer, Mary Mapes, now says a right wing conspiracy caused the entire fracas which Mapes has written a book about. It'll be out in November. Joining us now from Washington is Paul Mirengoff, a member of Powerline.com which was involved in this situation. To be fair to Mary Mapes, we would like get on and interview when the book comes out. I think this is a very small part of her book, but she does believe that an organized conservative cabal zeroed in on her story and tore it to pieces and she resents it. What say you sir? Mirengoff: Well I just think it's unfortunate that she can't admit that the story was a mistake and move on. This matter should have been put to rest months ago when the Thornburg panel issued it's findings. The Thornburg panel was commissioned by CBS, Miss Mapes' employer, to try to figure out what had happened. It was headed by Richard Thornburgh, the former Attorney General of the United States. He's hardly a member of some right wing conspiracy. He found that the story was indefensible. He said that they, uh, quoted, they used selective quotes from interviews, to distort the picture. He said they misrepresented findings of their own document examiner to their viewers and that really should have been the end of it. To blame this on the right wing conspiracy is ludicrous and pretty sad. O'Reilly: OK, but both Rather, Dan Rather and Mapes are still saying the story was correct, even though we got hoodwinked by our primary source which turned out to be bogus. And I don't think you're going to blow them out of that. But as you say, I mean, the internal investigation at CBS said, look this isn't up to our standards, we don't put this on the air. Now, Powerline, do you go after everybody, or do you just look at liberals, or are you trying to promote a conservative agenda? What exactly are you trying to do? Mirengoff: Well, we're conservative, and most, we do a lot of opining - hopefully opining, not bloviating - O'Reilly: Umhmm. Mirengoff: Along conservative lines. And when we report facts, we link to our facts, so the reader can go and check our sources and see whether we've gotten it right. And if we make a mistake, and it does happen, blogs do operate very fast, we make a mistake we get the correction... O'Reilly: But say you got a tip that said Tom Delay was doing something wrong or a conservative politician, anybody. Would you pursue that, or would you just dump it in the wastebasket? Mirengoff: No, if we had solid information we would go with that. We were highly, no one read us, it was years ago and no one was reading us at the time, but we were highly critical of Trent Lott, when that story broke with respect to Senator Thurmond and his comment. So, you know, we are conservative, but we don't shield anybody. O'Reilly: OK. Alright. So you say that you're in business to get the truth out to the folks. That's what your businesses do. Mirengoff: Yes, and to present conservative opinions. O'Reilly: Opinion. Alright. Now some of these other smear websites on the left, I mean all they do is follow people around and tape them and try to, you know, get little things that they say and take them out of context. So if you say a joke they present it as serious. Do you do that as well? Do you try to denigrate the other side? Mirengoff: No. We try to treat the other side with respect. O'Reilly: Nothing more to say on that? You don't use defamatory tactics, you don't go after anybody and try to destroy them because you disagree with them? Mirengoff: No. I mean on the Rather story for instance, if you look at our lengthy posts on that, you won't even find the name Dan Rather. We were focused on the story trying to determine whether it was true or false, not on the individual. O'Reilly: Alright. So you didn't bad mouth Rather, you didn't a history of his "Ratherisms" or try to make him look like some kind of ideological fool? Mirengoff: No, not at, later on, we linked to some, his history became relevant when he continued denying, denying the story, we linked to some people who did that. But the far focus was on the story not on Dan Rather. O'Reilly: OK. Now Powerline has become very successful and it's you and a couple of other lawyers running it. Correct? Mirengoff: Correct. O'Reilly: Now George Soros on the left, has bought his way into a number of these websites and uses them to obviously try to hurt people with whom he disagrees. You have silent funding from right wingers? Mirengoff: No. We don't get a penny from anybody. We, our goal is to say what we think and we don't want to be constrained, we don't want to bought and paid for, or doing anyone's bidding. O'Reilly: So no, no Melanskafe[sp?] or any of these guys kick you money and... Mirengoff: No, no absolutely not. Not a penny. We have a little advertising revenue now, but that's it. O'Reilly: So you're basically above-board? Conservative, but not looking to destroy anybody. Mirengoff: No. We're not out to destroy anybody. We try to be about ideas and we call them as we see them and because we're not funded we have the freedom to that. O'Reilly: Alright Mr. Mirengoff. And Mary Mapes is absolutely welcome anytime to come on this program to say whatever she wants to say. We appreciate your taking your time. Mirengoff: Thank you. Welcome Powerline readers! Please look around.