Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
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

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.