O’Reilly May Have Fudged War Reporting

[DonViejo]

Last edited Fri Feb 20, 2015, 06:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Is Bill O’Reilly the new Brian Williams? The Fox News host is being accused of making false claims similar to the ones that have (at least temporarily) cost Williams his job as NBC Nightly News anchor. O’Reilly has told stories about reporting on the Falklands War and experiencing combat in 1982. But Mother Jones’s David Corn reports that O’Reilly’s stories don’t jibe with the facts from the war. Moreover, O’Reilly was working for CBS News at the time, but multiple network executives say their reporters never made it to the war zone. “Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands,” Bob Schieffer, CBS News’s lead correspondent on the Falklands War, told Mother Jones. “For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals.” O’Reilly told Politico that the Mother Jones report was a “piece of garbage.”

Read it at Mother Jones

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/02/19/o-reilly-may-have-fudged-war-reporting.html

[MohRokTah]

1. O'Reilly covered civilian protests in Buenos Aries

Buenos Aries is 1300 miles away from the Falkland Islands.

A comparison to this within the United States would be thus:

Bill O'Reilly was in New York City doing his show during Hurricane Katrina. If Bill O'Reilly claimed he survived covering the horrors of Hurricane Katrina reporting from New Orleans, it would be similar to claiming he covered combat in the Falkland Islands from Buenos Aries.

Of course this comparison is not completely accurate since New Orleans is actually closer to New York City than Buenos Aries is to the Falkland Islands.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

2. "FUCK IT!!! I'LL MAKE IT UP LIVE!!! THIS FUCKING THING SUCKS!!!" nt

[Kingofalldems]

3. Kicked, recced and tweeted.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. This morning on TV they were saying he was jostled and his cameraman fell down

while he was covering a demonstration in Buenos Aires that occurred after hostilities had ended, on the mainland outside the previous combat zone, and where no military of any side were involved. I got jostled once at a white sale at Walmart so that makes me a war vet, too.

[leftynyc]

8. I get jostled every single

day on the subway. Where's my Bronze Star?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

13. LMFAO. Y'all are great.

[tularetom]

5. "May have" - I like that

He fuckin did fudge it.

Actually fudge is sort of a euphemism, what he really did was LIE.

[DonViejo]

15. "May have" avoids a lawsuit, whereas "He Lied" might definitely bring one down on TDB

[sharp_stick]

6. What would be more newsworthy

is finding something this asshole has done in life that isn't plastered with self indulgent bullshit.

[oldandhappy]

7. Bill is V.P. of fudge!

[LanternWaste]

9. Here are some of O'Reilly's allegations re: his time covering the Falklands War

Here are some of O'Reilly's allegations re: his time covering the Falklands War (from Mother Jones)

In his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America, O'Reilly stated, "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."

Conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, in a 2003 book, described how O'Reilly answered a question during a Washington panel discussion about media coverage of the Afghanistan war: "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.'"

In a 2004 column about US soldiers fighting in Iraq, O'Reilly noted, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."

In 2008, he took a shot at journalist Bill Moyers, saying, "I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn't see him.


All things being equal, it looks like O'Reilly is just as, if not more guilty of what he accuses Williams of. Not much room to spin out of this one.

[brooklynite]

10. Why this doesn't matter...

...O'Reilly isn't a news reporter (notwithstanding what he might claim), so he has no need to appear to be objective and ethical.

...It would be pretty hard to have less respect for him than most people do now.

[Kingofalldems]

11. Why this does matter...

He works for Fox News

By the way--you state that he has no need to appear ethical and objective. Says who?

[B Calm]

12. So when will Fox give O'Reilly 6 months off?

[KamaAina]

14. I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find out that lying is going on in this establishment!