By PDX People

PORTLAND, Ore. – For more than 20 years Bill O’Reilly has been a name that most Americans either love or hate since his style of reporting has often been confrontational because he’s not one to shy away from the hot-button issues of the day.

About Bill O’Reilly

Born in 1949, Bill O’Reilly didn’t actually start out in journalism until the early 1970’s since he would teach high school English and History for two years after earning his bachelor’s of arts degree from Marist College before going back to college at Boston University and earning his masters of arts degree in broadcast journalism.

During the early years of his journalism career, O’Reilly would work as a reporter and columnist for various newspapers across the United States before moving onto anchoring positions with television stations in Dallas, Pennsylvania, and Portland Oregon’s KATU.

O’Reilly’s stint as an anchor at Portland’s KATU, was for nine months, in 1984-1985.

He wasn’t in the Portland market for very long, but those who worked with him say O’Reilly was full of the self-confidence — you might even call it arrogance.

O’Reilly said, “I moved the ratings of that station from last to first, from October to July, I did a good job for those people.”

Claim To Fame

Bill O’Reilly’s “claim to fame” began in the late 1980’s with his time on the hit news television show Inside Edition before he eventually moved on to Fox News and started his hit well-known political commentary show The O’Reilly Factor

Over the years, O’Reilly has frequently used his platform on Fox News to draw attention to multiple hot-button issues of the day and he’s not been a stranger to controversy either and he’s also been in a war of words over the years with television personalities like Rosie O’Donnell to Barbara Walters.

Even though he frequently stands for Conservative causes, Bill O’Reilly is actually registered with the Independence Party of New York, and he’s not been one to shy away from drawing attention to controversies surrounding both political parties in the United States.

Thanks to his success in television, O’Reilly has been able to use his reported $20 million dollars per year earnings to support various Veterans causes across the United States and he’s also appeared in feature films as himself over the years including Iron Man 2 and Transformers Dark of the Moon.