James,
Maybe its better to think of it as controls or objects
In the report designer if you look to the left you will see a bar(Tool Box) with controls/objects that you can drag onto the screen, you should see Label and Rich Text in the Tool Box.
You can drag a Label control or a Rich Text control onto your report and data bind a field from the table to that control. A Rich Text control is more robust then a simple Label control. When you drag a field from the Field List by default it adds the field as a Label control to the screen.
-Michael