Bill O’Reilly continues to hold his position and not back down against various media outlets that claim to have outed him as a Brian Williams-style liar.
Bill O’Reilly was accused by Mother Jones of fabricating his many “war zone” stories from his time as a reporter during the Falklands war of 1982.
On Friday night’s episode of his popular talk show, Bill O’Reilly spent about 10 minutes knocking Mother Jones and defending his statements. He said things like, “Mother Jones, which has low circulation, [is] considered by many the bottom rung of journalism in America.”
The day before, O’Reilly called Mother Jones’ story a “giant piece of defamation,” “a lie,” and a smear. He went on to call one of the writers, David Corn, a “disgusting piece of garbage,” a “guttersnipe liar,” and a “far-left assassin.”
Despite reports to the contrary, Bill O’Reilly claims in his bestselling book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America, “You know that I am not easily shocked. I’ve reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands.”
Also, according to journalist Tucker Carlson’s 2003 book, Bill O’Reilly dodged a question at Washington panel discussion about media coverage of the Afghanistan war with a vague reference to the Falklands war. Carlson recalled, “Rather than simply answer the question, O’Reilly began by trying to establish his own bona fides as a war correspondent. ‘I’ve covered wars, okay? I’ve been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I’ve almost been killed three times, okay.'”
And the list of Bill O’Reilly’s statements on his war experience from the Falklands war goes on and on.
However, the problem is, there are sure a lot of people saying that Bill O’Reilly was never there.
“There’s an undeniable contradiction” in what O’Reilly has said about his Falklands coverage, Corn said to CNN.
In fact, CBS News’s chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer explained that the only “war zone” was in and around the Falkand islands, and “nobody from CBS got to the Falklands.”
Schieffer added that he “came close” to reaching the Falklands, but the task proved “impossible.” He said he, Bill O’Reilly, and other reporters were based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Shortly after the Mother Jones piece ran, Bill O’Reilly stated, “I was not on the Falkland Islands and I never said I was. I was in Buenos Aires.”
He explained, “If you were assigned to a war, you put on your resume you covered the Falklands, the Middle East, El Salvador, wherever it is where you were sent.”
He added, “This is what journalists do.”
What do you think about this mess with Bill O’Reilly and Mother Jones?