http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/arts/television/16ambush.html
When Bill O’Reilly’s camera crew ambushed Mike Hoyt at a bus stop in Teaneck, N.J., a few months ago, the on-camera confrontation and the microphone in his face reminded him, oddly enough, of the “60 Minutes” interviewer Mike Wallace.
Mr. Hoyt, executive editor of The Columbia Journalism Review, was well-versed in the venerable art of the on-camera, on-the-street confrontation, perfected by Mr. Wallace and other hard-charging television journalists in decades past. Now, in an appropriation of Mr. Wallace’s techniques, ambush interviews have become a distinguishing feature of Mr. O’Reilly’s program on the Fox News Channel.
Mr. Hoyt, one of more than 50 people that Mr. O’Reilly’s young producers have confronted in the past three years, said the interviews were “really just an attempt to make you look bad.” In almost every case Mr. O’Reilly uses the aggressive interviews to campaign for his point of view.
Mr. O’Reilly, the right-leaning commentator who has had the highest-rated cable show for about eight years, has called the interviews a way to hold people accountable for their actions. “When the bad guys won’t comment, when they run and hide, we will find them,” he said on “The O’Reilly Factor” recently.