Billing itself as the “fair and balanced” alternative to a media environment that it characterized as having a liberal bias (another slogan was “We Report. You Decide.”), Fox News debuted with a lineup of anchors that included Neil Cavuto and Tony Snow. It was the network’s opinion programming, however, that became most closely associated with the Fox News brand. Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Report (1996–98, continued as The O’Reilly Factor 1998–17) served as a showcase for O’Reilly’s confrontational interviewing style, and it was consistently the network’s top-rated program.
