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The Schmooze

Terry Gross To Bill O’Reilly: ‘One Of Us Still Has A Program’

Terry Gross has been doing her job for a long time — over 30 years, to be exact — and she’s seen it all. So when Bill O’Reilly accused her of defamation for asking a few tough questions during an interview in 2003, she didn’t lose any sleep over it.

Gross brought up the O’Reilly interview Thursday evening on “The Tonight Show” when Jimmy Fallon asked her to talk about an interview that didn’t go as planned.

“I asked him a few challenging questions about whether he ever used the microphone to settle scores or to get back at people,” Gross said. “Before I was even done with the question, he accused me of throwing every defamation in the book at him. And then made a little speech about, you know, ‘This NPR. I know this is… 30 minutes of defamation…. If you think that’s fair, Terry, you should get out of this business.’”

To which Gross now coolly observes, “I’m the one who still has a program.”

I guess someone needs to tell O’Reilly to stay out of the kitchen if he can’t stand the heat.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

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