Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

a reply to: Willtell

Great video. Classic and so to this point, eh?

Yep...Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them never change. Hilarious how O'Liely's tactics haven't changed. Shut up. Vicious. Wow. Just wow.

O'Reilly just confronted everything tonight on his opening 'Talking Points' segment (five minutes ago).
I will post the video when it goes up.
IMO he makes a very compelling refutation with plenty of actual physical evidence from CBS news 33 years ago.

a reply to: IAMTAT

Can't wait to see that.

But this video, from the OP? In my eyes it would be pretty hard to refute. As would the conversation with the Air Force officer. As would a couple of other things.


But hey, I would expect more lies to cover the other lies. But I'm open to seeing if he says anything he hasn't already said in the press.

A tall tale is a tall tail.


Here it is. Ad hom start

I am not impressed. He clearly said, even in his book, that he was in the Falklands.

A riot is not combat.

Ad hom ad hom. Nice. He doesn't convince me.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
O'Reilly just confronted everything tonight on his opening 'Talking Points' segment (five minutes ago).
I will post the video when it goes up.
IMO he makes a very compelling refutation with plenty of actual physical evidence from CBS news 33 years ago.

yup i just watched it, and in fact i also watched the segment where he showed compassion for Williams, this is just pathetic.

HERE is the transcript from the segment:

More proof the American media is corrupt.

That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points memo.

56-year-old David Corn, who works for the far left magazine Mother Jones smeared me, your humble correspondent, yesterday, saying I had fabricated some war reporting.

Mother Jones ... which has low circulation ... considered by many the bottom rung of journalism in America.

However, in this Internet age, the defamation they put forth gets exposure. And so I have to deal with this garbage tonight. I’m sorry.

Basically David Corn - a liar - says that I exaggerated situations in the Falklands War and Salvadoran War.

Here's the truth: everything I’ve said about my reportorial career - EVERYTHING - is true.

33 years ago in June, Argentina surrendered to Great Britain ... ending the Falklands War.

I was covering the conflict from Argentina and Uruguay for CBS News.

After learning of the surrender, angry mobs in Buenos Aires stormed the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, trying to overthrow the government of General Leopoldo Galtieri.

I was there on the street with my camera crews.

The violence was horrific, as Argentine soldiers fired into the crowd - who were responding with violent acts of their own.

My video of the combat led the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather that evening. And later on, I filed a report that ran nationwide.

That's what happened.

I never said I was on the Falkland Islands,as Corn purports. I said I covered the Falklands War ... which I did.

Now, in what I consider to be a miracle, I found this CBS internal memo from 33 years ago, praising my coverage that day.

The cable was sent to the CBS bureau chief in Buenos Aires by the news desk here in New York City:

"Doyle, O'Reilly didn't have the time last night but would like to say many thanks for the riot piece last night. WCBS-TV and WCAU-TV both took the entire piece, instead of stripping it for pix. They called to say thanks for a fine piece.”

"Thanks again. Your piece made the late feed, a winner last night."

Want more? Here it is:

Shortly after my crew and I escaped grave danger on the streets of Buenos Aires, I wrote to CBS News boss Ed Joyce praising the crew’s bravery.

I have the letter:

"The crews were great … the riot had been very bad, we were gassed, shot at, and I had the best vantage point in which to report the story."

So we have rock solid proof that David Corn smeared me ... and some websites that picked up his defamation did as well.

Now, I had to spend hours last night on the phone with various reporters and crawling around my basement covered with dust to find documents from 33 years ago. Again, it was a miracle I found them.

All because an irresponsible guttersnipe, a far left zealot who has attacked Fox News many times before, spit this stuff out on the net.

And you know what? Nothing is going to happen to David Corn.

Mother Jones and the far left websites ... couldn't care less about the truth, They are in business to injure. This is a political hit job.

At this point, TV coverage has been scant, but CNN tried to exploit the situation because a guy over there named Brian Stelter is another far left zealot masquerading as a journalist.

CNN can do a lot better than this guy.

Real journalists knew this story was B-S from the jump.

They knew Corn was trying to take the Brian Williams situation and wrap it around my neck for ideological reasons - because he has a history of attacking Fox News.

In addition, Corn actually wrote that I hammered Brian Williams when everyone knows I went out of my way on Kimmel and The Factor to be compassionate to the man!

Corn must think the folks are as dumb as he is.

www.billoreilly.com...

a reply to: Stormdancer777

His compassionate video is included earlier in this thread. Then there's this. Remember....O'Reilly was with CBS (from what I gather) when he was "in the Falklands."

And here it is...stolen valor.

Progressive Veterans Group Wants O'Reilly Off The Air

VoteVets, a leading progressive veterans advocacy group, is calling on Fox News to take Bill O'Reilly off the air following revelations from Mother Jones that the Fox News host may have repeatedly misrepresented his experiences reporting on the 1982 Falklands War.

"NBC acted completely appropriately in taking Brian Williams off the air and looking into claims he's made over the years. Fox News has to do the same thing," Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org, a 400,000-member organization that advocates for vets and military families, said in a statement. "The issue, for me, isn't that Fox has been caught off guard, and didn't realize O'Reilly was telling possibly false tales. That I can accept. It's what do they do about it now? That will tell us a lot about how seriously they take their news organization."

So far, the response from O'Reilly and Fox does not suggest that they take the apparent infraction seriously. Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz published a piece featuring O'Reilly saying Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn is "a liar, a smear merchant, and will do anything he can to injure me and the network. Everybody knows that. Everything I've reported about my journalistic career is true."

On Thursday, Mother Jones reported that O'Reilly "repeatedly told his audience that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war and that he experienced combat during that 1982 conflict between England and Argentina. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, 'I've been there. That's really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I've seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven't.'"

The magazine went on to note that American journalists were not allowed near combat in that conflict, even citing a CBS News producer who worked on the coverage. The findings follow O'Reilly's criticism of NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who was recently suspended for misleading viewers about his own combat experience.

"Men and women have fought, died, been wounded, and scarred by war. There are many journalists who actually were in the crossfire, who died, trying to bring the story to the American people," Soltz added. "What Bill O'Reilly has done is steal their valor, and it is wrong."

Veteran War Reporters: O'Reilly's Falklands Fibs Violate "Journalism 101"

In comments to Media Matters, war correspondents criticized media figures like O'Reilly for "exaggerating" their experiences.

"I have no patience with journalists exaggerating their role as derring-do types when they're trying to report the news, it's not about us, it's about the news," Don North, a former ABC News and NBC News war correspondent who has covered conflicts from Vietnam to El Salvador, said of O'Reilly. "I think many journalists, all of us probably, have had some attitude toward perhaps embellishing or writing a more dramatic story, but it's a discipline you've got to watch. It's Journalism 101. You don't exaggerate, you don't lie about it."

"I'm concerned about the damage this is doing to journalists everywhere," Sig Christenson, a founding member of Military Reporters and Editors who has covered Iraq and Afghanistan warfare for the San Antonio Express-News, said about O'Reilly. "When people see these stories and then they are called into question it makes the rest of us look bad. We are at a really critical point in our business and our credibility matters. If I am introduced as someone who was in combat will people even believe it?"

He also took O'Reilly to task for having recently been critical of Brian Williams.

"If (O'Reilly's) misrepresenting himself and criticizing someone else for misrepresenting himself then he's got problems," Christenson said. "If Bill O'Reilly's gone out and done something like that, God help him. I know one thing, it's bad for all of us. We don't need it."

Matt Schofield, a McClatchy national security reporter who has reported from combat in Iraq, said such misleading tales hurt readers and reporters.

"In these sorts of cases, lying about our personal experiences never advances the truth. In fact, anytime we take our focus away from the story and put it upon ourselves, our own adventures, is a disservice to readers and the truth," he said, later adding, "We don't lie. We search for the truth, and our searching may come up short at points, but we try to tell the truth all the time. If we don't have that credibility, we can't expect the trust of those who come to our sites for information. Without that, we've got nothing."

Other war reporters aren't impressed either.

a reply to: IAMTAT

IDC what he says at this point to CYA.
We all can hear what he said, that he was in combat in the middle of a firefight.
Now it is just a riot?

And ya for a journalist, he seems to never understand the idea of going after the ball not the player but that his billy 101.
Shut up when you are talking to him!

He was at a Sheraton hotel in Buenos Aires, 1,200 miles from the Falklands.

How the HELL do you conflate that into a "war zone?"

O'Reilly has been busted before telling lies, but this one takes the cake. I can fully understand why a veteran's group is upset with him over "stolen valor."

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Yeah this one might not go away as easily as he and FoxNews hope.

One thing I've noticed is (and though I dislike them, for the purposes of this observation let's use the wing terms) that right-wing-type outrage is quicker to be jumped into and spread and like wildfire and peters out just as quickly while left-wing outrage tends to build more slowly and carefully and kind of dribbles in over an extended time. You can even see this trend in the topics here. It's an interesting phenomenon that I see but could be totally wrong about.

Bill O'Reilly Responds. We Annotate.

The Fox News host still hasn't gotten back to us, but here's his monologue—factchecked.
TALKING POINTS MEMO2-20-15

Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly ... thanks for watching us tonight ... more proof the American media is corrupt. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points memo. This man ... 56-year-old David Corn ... who works for the far left magazine ... Mother Jones ... smeared me, your humble correspondent, yesterday ... saying I had fabricated some war reporting. Mother Jones ... which has low circulation ... considered by many the bottom rung of journalism in America. however ... in this Internet age ... the defamation they put forth ... gets exposure. and so I have to deal with this garbage tonight. I’m sorry.

Mother Jones did give O'Reilly a chance to "deal with this" earlier. Before posting the article, we sent him and Fox News a detailed list of questions and asked for comments and clarifications. They chose not to respond at all.

basically David Corn ... a liar ... says that I exaggerated situations in the Falklands War ... and Salvadoran War.

The article did not use the word "exaggerate." It noted that there were contradictions between his accounts and the factual record.

Here's the truth ... everything I’ve said about my reportorial career ... everything ... is true.

See above.

33-years ago in June ... Argentina surrendered to Great Britain ... ending the Falklands War. I was covering the conflict from Argentina and Uruguay for CBS News.

In his own 2001 book, The No Spin Zone, O'Reilly says he arrived in Buenos Aires just before the war ended.

After learning of the surrender ... angry mobs in Buenos Aires ... stormed the presidential palace ... the Casa Rosada ... trying to overthrow the government of General Leopoldo Galtieri.

News accounts, including the CBS News report, noted that a crowd numbering in the thousands had gathered to hear the president, but people grew angry after learning Galtieri would not speak, with many denouncing him and his junta as traitors for surrendering to the Brits. Media accounts do not describe the scene as a mob storming the palace, but angry protesters who set fires, broke store windows, and jostled reporters.

iI was there on the street ... with my camera crews.

In a 2009 interview, O'Reilly claimed other CBS journalists were too fearful to cover this event: "I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS news correspondents were hiding in the hotel." Yet veteran CBS News reporter Bob Schieffer, who was then the lead correspondent in Buenos Aires says, "We were all out with our camera crews that day to cover the protest. I'd been out there with a crew too."

The violence was horrific. ... as Argentine soldiers ... fired into the crowd ... who were responding with violent acts of their own. My video of the combat ... led the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather that evening. and later on ... I filed a report ... that ran nationwide. That's what happened.

In tonight's account, O'Reilly doesn't say—as he has previously said—that Argentine troops gunned down civilians and many were killed. So is he standing by those prior assertions? He does still refer to the protest as "combat."

I never said I was on the Falkland Islands... as Corn purports ... I said I covered the Falklands War ... which I did.

See above. O'Reilly said on his own show in 2013, "I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands." In his 2001 book, he wrote, "I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands." The "active war zone" in the Falklands war was 1,200 miles from Buenos Aires, far out in the Atlantic ocean.

Now ... in what I consider to be a miracle ... I found this CBS internal memo from 33 years ago ... praising my coverage that day. The cable was sent to the CBS bureau chief in Buenos Aires ... by the news desk here in New York City: "Doyle, O'Reilly didn't have the time last night but would like to say many thanks for the riot piece last night. WCBS-TV and WCAU-TV both took the entire piece, instead of stripping it for pix. They called to say thanks for a fine piece.” "Thanks again. Your piece made the late feed, a winner last night."

No one has suggested O'Reilly did not cover the protest or that the footage he obtained was not valuable for CBS News.

Want more? ... here it is: Shortly after my crew and I ... escaped grave danger on the streets of Buenos Aires ... I wrote to CBS News boss Ed Joyce ... praising the crew’s bravery. I have the letter: "The crews were great … the riot had been very bad, we were gassed, shot at, and I had the best vantage point in which to report the story."

No one has suggested that O'Reilly and his crew did not perform well while covering a protest that turned ugly.

So we have rock solid proof ... that David Corn ... smeared me ... and some websites that picked up his defamation ... did as well.
Actually, no.
Now ... I had to spend hours last night ... on the phone with various reporters ... and crawling around my basement covered with dust to find documents from 33 years ago. Again, it was a miracle I found them. all because an irresponsible ... guttersnipe ... a far left zealot ... who has attacked Fox News many times before ... spit this stuff out on the net. and you know what? ... nothing is going to happen to David Corn.

O'Reilly neglected to mention that during one of those interviews he said, "I expect David Corn to be in the kill zone. Where he deserves to be." In an email to Fox News executives, Mother Jones' editors in chief asked O'Reilly to renounce this remark and apologize for responding in a violent tone. So far he has not done so.

Mother Jones and the far left websites ...couldn't care less about the truth. They are in business to injure. This is a political hit job. At this point ... TV coverage has been scant, but CNN tried to exploit the situation because a guy over there named Brian Stelter ... is another far left zealot ... masquerading as a journalist. CNN can do a lot better than this guy.

You can watch that CNN spot hereand decide for yourself.

Not an Oreilly fan, or a Williams fan but I can't help but wonder if this is a Clinton war room initiative considering the Williams deal started to highlight Hillary's claims from a visit to Bosnia a few years back..

Not a Hillary fan either, actually there's not too much to like in Politics or news these days...

No wonder folks would rather watch reality tv

a reply to: ~Lucidity

Excellent reporting Lucidity!


I think O’Reilly avoids the direct accusations with a lot of noise and irrelevant material…he always does that.


That often buries the details of his sins just enough to get by

a reply to: JacKatMtn

Hard to be a fan of anyone on MSM. Or most media these days.

Reality TV is the devil!

Give me a good secret pleasure soap like Jane the Virgin or State of Affairs or a good sci-fi series anyday LOL

a reply to: ~Lucidity

no soap for me.. but I am a frequent viewer of the growing survival show genre )

on topic...

I thought BWills step down for a few days was enough... it's not like folks didn't know where he stood politically so you watch his reports with a grain of salt...

Same with OReilly... he just comes from another angle...

I'd rather see this kind of scrutiny directed at our elected.. party be damned, when they embellish, distort or outright lie to us, we should hold them to the fire...

These media folks? meh YMMV

This is good...more from MJ:

NEW YORK -- Mother Jones has called on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly to apologize for the "violent tone" of his response to the magazine challenging his recollection of covering the Falklands War.

In a Friday letter to Fox News executive vice president Bill Shine and a network spokeswoman, Mother Jones co-editors Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein said they "welcome criticism," but that O'Reilly's suggestion that Washington editor David Corn deserves "'to be in the kill zone' crosses a line."

"Like everyone in media today, we are concerned about the safety of our staff," they wrote. "We'd have hoped that statements with this kind of violent tone would not come from a fellow media professional." [Source via HuffPo]

a reply to: JacKatMtn

Mother Jones does a good bit of that too...the corporations and the politicians owned by them. As does Rolling Stone. The two of them might be some of the best (what's left of) journalism out there. But no one's perfect, right?

a reply to: ~Lucidity

TBH, I trust the overall temperature of the folks here on ATS to weigh in, and take it all in, then on my own try and weave through the gauntlet and make my own decision...

For now, I still leans towards this being driven by higher powers, to keep folks rallying to their perspective corners..

and keep us from something more important to focus on..

a reply to: JacKatMtn

Sure. Even if there isn't a pre-existing agenda (which I will agree there usually is), they wouldn't waste an opportunity to devise one.