I am greatly saddened that many people I work with consider O’Reilly from Fox News to be the news.

He is not news. He is commentary. He is opinion. He is the columnist or unsigned editorial on the “Opinion” section of the newspaper. He is not front-page news. He is not features. He is not sports. He is commentary.

Or, as I like to say, he is an AM radio DJ.

When I was a young lad, it was a treasured day when my brother and I would wake up before dawn. After getting dressed in our Wrangler jeans, we would step outside to see the first rays of day. Battling for our attention would be the smells of our father’s coffee and the dewy fields of star thistle. Then we’d jump in his pickup and head to his construction job. On the way, as he sped across the bumpy county roads, we would listen to a guy or two yelling something about this political hack or that waste of taxpayer dollars. My Dad would laugh, he’d get riled up, he’d grunt, and then we’d stop for doughnuts.

As I grew up and started working for my dad, riding with him every morning, we’d listen to Rush Limbaugh. We’d listen to another morning talk show. We’d laugh; we’d join in the scorn. We were entertained. Well, at least I was.

I’m afraid too many people are now taking this AM radio DJ jazz of yelling one’s clever frustrations into a microphone as truth! As news! As a religion! And if you dare disagree, you might as well burn your flag, disavow God, desecrate a cemetery and destroy every good thing this country stands for!

I suppose I’m blessed to have a background in newspapers. I know each newspaper has sections. I know people need to speak and be heard. Within each news story that opportunity is given through the reporter interviewing people on either side of an issue and letting their comments be placed in balance in the article.

However, the news story is not the place for a reporter to interject his or her own thoughts on the matter – through words or through the unfair treatment of one side of an issue in comparison to the other.

If any reporter feels strongly about an issue, he can write a column about it. That column will be placed in its own little box that is clearly separate from the news story, or in a separate section of the paper called the “Opinion” section.

The current source for news (telvision), however, doesn’t have sections. It has a Glenn Beck, a Nancy Grace, a Bill O’Reilly – commentators. Yes, sometimes their words are 100 percent fact. But then they drop straight into relaying their beliefs, worries, passions, concerns, intellect, hesitation, contempt, anger, Anger, RIGHTEOUS ANGER!

Now, viewers can’t help but be confused about where the news ends and the commentary begins.

An older man I find very wise in his field today said that everything O’Reilly says is backed up by facts. I am greatly saddened that even he has been fooled into accepting entertainment as news.

While flipping through the channels last night, I briefly lingered on O’Reilly. He was refuting the White House’s comments that Fox News is more of a perspective than a news organization.

Such a statement is one that in an overall sense of things, I heartily agree with. I would hope that anybody with just a slight bit of critical thinking could easily come to the same conclusion.

But here was O’Reilly, taking that piece of truth and pulling it like taffy.

Well yes, Fox News does have some segments that are truly news, without any commentary jabbed in. And yes, all of your nightly commentators who bless your network with huge ratings and mucho dinero do say truthful facts.

But what about all the commentary?

Yes, it’s true that a piece of taffy-truth can be pulled into all kinds of shapes, sizes and wonderful conspiracies that rile me up to the point of knowing I AM an emotional being! But isn’t that still stretching the truth, I mean taffy?

How can anybody deny that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff, was truthful in his statement that nightly Fox “News” is actually commentary delivered by commentators?