O’Reilly Said He Had Trouble Booking Blog Segment, Actually Turned Guests Away

Yesterday morning, right-wing Powerline blogger John Hinderaker (”Hindrocket”) told readers that his partner Paul Mirengoff would be appearing on last night’s O’Reilly segment about bloggers:

Paul will be interviewed on the O’Reilly Factor tonight. It should be a fun conversation, and I’d encourage our readers to tune in.

But later in the day, Paul posted an update, saying that O’Reilly had chosen to go with someone else:

I won’t be appearing on the Factor after all. They’ve decided to take the segment in a different direction.

Which begs the question: If O’Reilly was actually turning guests away, why did he try to smear Media Matters by claiming he had trouble booking anyone for the segment?

These people [bloggers] are so vicious and they — the media is so corrupt in taking their uncorroborated…defamation that most people won’t run for office, sir. They won’t do television and radio commentary. We had to book this segment — I couldn’t get people to come on and say what you guys are saying, because they were afraid that Media Matters would go after them. They — I couldn’t — I had people turn down this segment — a bunch of them. [They said,] ‘What are you, crazy? I’m going to criticize these assassins? They’ll come after me.’ That’s a chilling effect.