Researchers: Bill O'Reilly calls someone a derogatory name every 6.8 seconds

Bill O'Reilly, the TV personality who presides over the "No Spin Zone," calls someone a derogatory name every 6.8 seconds during the editorials on his popular Fox News program, according to researchers at Indiana University.

"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," Mike Conway, a journalism professor, says in a press release. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

The researchers examined 115 episodes over a six-month period. They found that O'Reilly employed six of seven traditional propaganda devices, including "the selective use of facts and half-truths."

"This frequent emphasis on fear and social disorder -- coupled with his overriding lack of resolution to that fear -- not only puts O’Reilly at odds with traditional journalistic values, it also suggests a rhetorical strategy of playing on a primal human emotion to attract and maintain viewers," the researchers write in the conclusion of their journal article.

The researchers claim that O'Reilly is "heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than [Father Charles] Coughlin," a war-era columnist and broadcaster remembered for his fascist tendencies and anti-Semitic sentiments.