O'Reilly pulled a Brian Williams?

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dennishoddy

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The original post in this thread.

http://www.dailydot.com/news/bill-or...id-corn/?fb=dd

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly accused of pulling a Brian Williams

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is facing accusations similar to those that recently forced celebrity anchor Brian Williams from his desk at NBC.

In an article published by Mother Jones late Thursday afternoon, reporters David Corn and Daniel Schulman accused O’Reilly of fabricating his experiences during the 1980s as a war correspondent in South and Central America.

O’Reilly has frequently touted his own reporting during the Falklands war to emphasize the difference between himself and journalists who’ve never worked a conflict zone. In one tale, he drags an injured South American cameraman to safety during a violent street riot in Buenos Aires, only to be threatened by Argentine soldier bearing an assault rifle. As Mother Jones reports, O’Reilly has often referred to this as happening within a “war zone.”
As Corn and Schulman point out, however, the protest to which O’Reilly refers was far from the conflict on British controlled islands in the South Atlantic-more than a thousands miles away, in fact. The article also points out that O’Reilly has said repeatedly that he served as a correspondent for CBS News “in the Falklands.” According to Bob Schieffer, who was the network’s lead correspondent during the conflict, “Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands. ... It was impossible.”

During a radio show in 2005, O’Reilly reportedly told a caller: “I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America.” In his book, The No Spin Zone, he recalls visiting the El Salvador’s Morazan province during the country’s civil war after CBS hired him in 1981. There he reached a village in an area allegedly controlled by the guerillas. “But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead,” he wrote.

Mother Jones challenges O’Reilly’s version of the El Salvador story, using CBS footage as ammunition. “His own footage, which was recently posted by The Nation, showed residents walking about and only one or two burned-down structures,” Corn and Schulman wrote. “O'Reilly's CBS report gave no indication that he had experienced any combat on this assignment in El Salvador.”

O’Reilly responded to the Mother Jones piece on Thursday evening calling it a “piece of garbage” and Corn “a liar.” He told Politico: “It’s a hit piece. Everything I said about what I reported in South and Central America is true. Everything.”

"I was not on the Falkland Islands and I never said I was," O'Reilly continued. "I was in Buenos Aires. In Buenos Aires we were in a combat situation after the Argentines surrendered."

Corn later fired back, highlighting to Politico the fact that O’Reilly has referred to his time as a in Buenos Aires as reporting from a war zone. "He said he was in the war zone during the Falkland Island conflicts-the conflict was in the Falkland Islands, it was not in Buenos Aires," Corn said. "He covered a protest after the war was over in Buenos Aires. I don't think that's a reasonable definition of a combat situation. If you look up 'combat situation' in the dictionary, it's not 'an ugly protest'."

"Rather than calling anyone a liar or a guttersnipe, he had ample opportunity to deal with the facts of this case," Corn added. "He elected not to, and instead engaged in name calling."





Today CBS released the footage of what Bill described.

You can see it here: http://www.billoreilly.com/b/VIDEO:...of-the-Falklands-War/-909767145769612029.html

Seems Ol Bill was telling the truth and a hack job by the libs is in a total fail right now. Amazing how the party of caring wants to destroy anybody that doesn't fall in line with them.
 

TenBears

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O'Reily will interview Meagan Kelly, and they will put an end to all this hub-bub. They may even get colmbs to attest to the fact that Bill killed the cobra in the nam while Hathcock was spotting for him.
 

vvvvvvv

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TerryMiller

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O'Reily will interview Meagan Kelly, and they will put an end to all this hub-bub. They may even get colmbs to attest to the fact that Bill killed the cobra in the nam while Hathcock was spotting for him.

If you had watched Bill O'Reilly's show last night, you would have seen him interview a retired NBC newsman that was also in the same area with O'Reilly during the Falklands War. So, he's now had news people from both CBS and NBC verify his description of what it was like in Argentina at that time. They also played some video of some of the unrest that was going on.
 

ignerntbend

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If you had watched Bill O'Reilly's show last night, you would have seen him interview a retired NBC newsman that was also in the same area with O'Reilly during the Falklands War. So, he's now had news people from both CBS and NBC verify his description of what it was like in Argentina at that time. They also played some video of some of the unrest that was going on.
There was a war in Iraq. A helicopter was fired upon. Many people will verify that.
This is crucial: Brian Williams was not in a helicopter that was fired upon in Iraq.

If you saw the Howard Kurtz program on Sunday, you saw Bill O'Reilly point to a New York Times article from 1982 that documented a riot in Argentina. This is crucial: the article DOES NOT verify O'Reilly's story that many people (or any people) were killed. It doesn't verify his heroic efforts to save a photographer in the face of real bullets in a war zone. He embedded his tall tales in a story with an element of truth? Isn't that how it always goes?

He says that the police were firing real bullets into the crowd and many were killed. All anyone will verify is that the police were firing rubber bullets into the crowd and several were injured. Several is not many and injured is not killed. This is not hair splitting or semantics.

This doesn't even touch on his other story about war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands. In fact, he now says that he never claimed to have been in the Falklands, even though he wrote that he was in a book still available on Amazon.com. Its not a big deal. His audience doesn't care and it's a fascinating thing to watch.
 
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TenBears

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Fox is not conservative unless you believe Bush (take your pick), John McCain, Lindsey (the eternal bachelor) Graham, and boots on the ground on any country that doesn't agree with us, is conservative. The only person I can stomach to watch is Napolitano, and they slap his hand regularly,here is one video he got in trouble for. Listen to his evil words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN0IMXgeKu8
 

Ace_on_the_Turn

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If you had watched Bill O'Reilly's show last night, you would have seen him interview a retired NBC newsman that was also in the same area with O'Reilly during the Falklands War. So, he's now had news people from both CBS and NBC verify his description of what it was like in Argentina at that time. They also played some video of some of the unrest that was going on.

I would ask how you could call anyone an apologist, but I've seen enough of your postings to know.

O'Reilly claimed in his book that "Argentine soldiers fired into the crowd with "real bullets" and slaughtered "many" civilians. It. Never. Happened.
Argentine historian Federico G. Lorenz, an author who has written extensively on the Falklands/Malvinas war said, "As far as I know, there were no people killed at the protests after the news of the Argentine surrendering arrived to [Buenos Aires]. There were incidents at May Square…and people slightly injured due to gasses and anti riot munition, but not dead people. Press from June 15, 1982, reports about 5 buses burnt “many detainees and injured people”. One of the photographs shows precisely a wounded lying surrounded by people."

O'Reilly has told a fanciful tale about saving a camera man.
"Mr. Engberg, the former CBS News correspondent, also strongly disputed Mr. O’Reilly’s claim that he had rescued an injured cameraman while being chased by the Argentine army. “Nobody reported a cameraman being shot or injured,” he said. His account was supported by a senior member of the CBS News management team, with close knowledge of the events that night, who said that nobody was reported injured, and no request for medical attention was made to CBS News’s local medical team."

O'Reilly said in his book, "I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands. At a Washington panel discussion he said, "'I've covered wars, okay? I've been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I've almost been killed three times, okay.'"
He was 1200 miles from the Falklands during the war.

O'Rielly said in a column, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."
There was no "combat" in Argentina.


Now that it's been shown that both have told similar lies, it's interesting to see how their networks treat them. In the Brian Williams case, he was suspended by NBC for 6 months and it's not clear if he will be allowed back on the air. In Bill O'Reilly's case, Fox News immediately made it clear there would be no punishment forthcoming. Why such differing reactions? Two major reasons. First is simply money. Bill O'Reilly is very, very important to Fox News' bottom line. His show is, by far and away, Fox News' highest rated program and accounts for a large portion of Fox News' income. The income from NBC Nightly News is hardly a rounding error for NBC.

The second reason is that Brian Williams is held to a higher standard. Brian Williams had the reputation of being trustworthy. And, as Robyn Pennacchia so elegantly said it, " Bill O'Reilly's lies are the equivalent of your grandpa telling you he walked ten miles to school everyday, uphill both ways and in four feet of snow." No one expects O'Reilly to be trustworthy.
 

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