By Scotty Schenck, photo editor
Only a few weeks after CBS “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams was suspended for an error in his retelling of an Iraq War news story, famed Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly is coming under fire for similar charges.
He railed against Williams, claiming the right to a free press is an implicit agreement that the press will report with truthfulness.
“The press must be honest,” O’Reilly said on his show on Feb. 11. “If you can’t trust a news anchor or commentator, you’re not going to watch that person. … Reporting comes with a big responsibility.”
O’Reilly’s own controversy started on Feb. 19 in an article by David Corn and Daniel Schulman.
The writers showed that the host of “The O’Reilly Factor” had criticized Williams for feigning details of his story. However, the writers claim O’Reilly lied about his previous war experiences as well, specifically when he claimed he was in a “war zone” in the Falklands War. The war took place between the U.K. and Argentina when the latter invaded the Falkland Islands.
“I was in a situation one time in a war zone in Argentina in the Falklands where my photographer got run down,” O’Reilly said during his coverage of the 2013 Boston Bombing.
However, in an interview with Mother Jones, former CBS News’ lead correspondent Bob Schieffer said no one from CBS ever reached the war zone in the Falklands, even though the news station tried to get reporters to the islands. Also, BBC’s defense correspondent Caroline Wyatt said in an article on BBC’s website that the British military made it impossible for journalists to get to the areas where conflict was taking place.
“We were, in all, a party of about 32-34 accredited journalists, photographers, television crew members. We were all white, male and British. There was no embedded reporter from Europe, the Commonwealth or the US (though they tried hard enough), let alone from Latin America,” Wyatt said.
Further in the article, Corn and Schulman examine O’Reilly’s 2001 memoir, entitled “The No Spin Zone,” where he never even discussed being in any combat zone, but did say that he landed in Buenos Aires soon before Argentina surrendered.
O’Reilly recently responded to the charges, first by attacking one of the writers of the Mother Jones’ story.
“Basically, David Corn, a liar, says I exaggerated situations in the Falklands War and Salvadoran War,” O’Reilly said on his show on Feb. 20, where he claimed everything he has said about his coverage was the truth. “I never said I was on the Falkland Islands, as Corn purports. I said I covered the Falklands War, which I did.”
In a blog post by the Washington Post, they claim that O’Reilly was covering violent protests in Buenos Aires and, to O’Reilly, that equated to a war zone.
Now, O’Reilly has become increasingly defensive over the allegations and of media outlets publishing the story. The New York Times reported that one of its journalists had been threatened by O’Reilly when trying to get him to comment on the allegations.
“I am coming after you with everything I have,” O’Reilly was quoted as saying in the New York Times article. “You can take it as a threat.”
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
