Bill O’Reilly launches a furious attack against kettles. (Fox News; screen grab Daily News)
The first thing to know about Fox News‘ Bill O’Reilly is that he is always talking about himself. So when O’Reilly (2/11/15) said that NBC‘s Brian Williams “had to go” because he manufactured stories about dangers he faced in his reporting career, it should come as no surprise to find out that O’Reilly can be found doing the exact same thing.
Most prominently, Mother Jones‘ David Corn (2/19/15) pointed out that despite O’Reilly’s claim (in his book The No-Spin Zone) that “I’ve reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands,” in reality he was never on the islands that Argentina and Britain fought a war over in 1982. Nevertheless, O’Reilly has repeatedly boasted of his exploits on the remote South Atlantic islands—telling a detailed anecdote in 2013, for example, of saving his injured photographer “in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands.”
As Corn notes, O’Reilly did go to the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires right after the Falklands War to cover the aftermath of the defeat. And he now says that’s what he was talking about when he talked about being in an “active war zone.” As O’Reilly told Mediaite (2/19/15):
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. That is what journalists do.
Say you went to report from Dubai during the Gulf War and then later bragged that you were in an “active war zone in Iraq”—I could totally picture a journalist like Brian Williams doing that. But it’s not something an ethical journalist would do.
And when O’Reilly speaks about “having survived a combat situation” in Argentina? He explains that he was talking about covering the anti-government protests that followed the military’s defeat in the war (Daily News, 2/20/15):
The Argentine army pulled up in giant trucks, came out with guns and opened fire on the crowd. The video [we filed for CBS Evening News] shows that; it’s on the Internet, you can see it. We shot it…. That was combat. Soldiers shooting at people who were trying to overthrow the government.
That video is on the Internet; matter of fact, it’s right here (thanks to Mother Jones, which posted it to accompany Corn’s story):
Unfortunately for O’Reilly, that video doesn’t show any “soldiers shooting at people trying to overthrow the government,” or anything that resembles “a combat situation.” It does feature a voiceover from Bob Schieffer saying, “The police threatened to use teargas at one point, and several North American television crews were jostled.” That’s presumably a reference to what O’Reilly “survived.”
It does matter when journalists have a propensity to make things up, even for personal aggrandizement. But there’s a more important level of lying when it’s done in the service of power, particularly to justify state violence—and O’Reilly has a history of that, too.
Bill O’Reilly reporting from a Salvadoran village he later described as “leveled.” (CBS News/Vanderbilt Archives)
Ten days before Corn’s piece appeared, Greg Grandin had a piece in The Nation (2/9/15) talking about O’Reilly’s recounting (in The No Spin Zone) of a report he did in 1982 for CBS about a remote village in El Salvador, based on a tip from a Salvadoran army colonel:
The “muchachos” [guerrillas] had wiped out a small village called Meanguera a few miles to the south because its mayor was deemed friendly to the government. The atrocity had not been confirmed, though, because nobody in his right mind would go into the guerrilla-controlled areas….
O’Reilly, of course, was not in his right mind, and bravely went to Meanguera to check it out:
The place was leveled to the ground and fires were still smoldering. But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead. There was absolutely nobody around who could tell us what happened. I quickly did a stand-up amid the rubble and we got the hell out of there.
When he returned to San Salvador, he filed a story:
I explained that while a scorched-earth policy was clearly in effect in remote villages—the evidence was right there on tape—it was impossible to say just who was doing the scorching. Could be the muchachos, could be the government. The 90-second package contained great video and a fairly impressive “on the scene in a very bad place” stand-up by yours truly.
Grandin, like Corn, found the report in question (dated 5/20/82), and once again it bears no resemblance to O’Reilly’s description:
It’s obvious that Meanguera is not “leveled to the ground,” nor is anything “smoldering”—rather, there’s a couple of damaged buildings. O’Reilly doesn’t show any “carnage,” but there are plenty of men, women and children going about their business on camera, very much alive. The point of O’Reilly’s CBS report was not how frightening guerrilla violence was, but rather how well the Salvadoran government is doing against the rebels, thanks to US training: “These days, Salvadoran soldiers appear to be doing more singing than fighting,” O’Reilly declares.
The main point of O’Reilly’s Williamsesque reimagining of the Meanguera story may have been to show that he had the “cojones” to go into what he called “Indian Country.” But Grandin points out that the original report had a more sinister context. Meanguera was just a few miles away from El Mozote, a village where the US-created and -trained Atlacatl Brigade killed more than 700 civilians on December 11, 1981—one of the worst atrocities of the entire Cold War. As Grandin notes, “Going to Meanguera in early 1982 would be as if Seymour Hersh, when he first learned of the My Lai massacre, decided to investigate events the next town over.” To do a report on singing soldiers from an army responsible for mass murder has a certain Triumph of the Will quality to it.
Grandin points out that Raymond Bonner, who went to El Mozote for the New York Times and documented the massacre, was subjected to concerted attacks from the Reagan administration, conservative media like the Wall Street Journal and the right-wing pressure group Accuracy In Media. “The Times sided with the critics, and Bonner eventually left the paper, after first being transferred to the business section,” Grandin writes—while O’Reilly, who went to Meanguera to do a feel-good story, “went on to transform cable TV.”
The story of O’Reilly’s war fabrications parallels the selective reporting on Brian Williams’ falsehoods (FAIR Blog, 2/5/15). Corn’s piece—which mentions Grandin’s, by way of debunking O’Reilly’s pretensions to being a combat journalist—has gotten a fair amount of attention in other media, where it’s largely played as a pissing match between two scrappy journalists. The Nation story, on the other hand, isn’t so much fun to talk about. If O’Reilly lied about being under fire, that reflects on him—and his employers, if they decline to do anything about it. But corporate media as a whole averted their eyes from the El Mozote massacre. Start factchecking those lies, and you’re going to embarrass a whole lot of people—too many, clearly, for comfort.
A black pot too full to piss in
O’Reilly has fully explained the misinformation that has recently been spread regarding his wartime coverage. Your desperate attempts to discredit him because he doesn’t enjoy the Kool-Aid you subsist on is nothing short of disgraceful.
Get a real job and stop trying to ruin people who have a real job and speak truth against the socialist propaganda that you deal in. What a complete idiot you are.
David K. Winnett, Jr., Captain, USMC (Ret.)
PS: I too have been to war. I’m betting you haven’t. War requires both physical and moral courage. Attributes that you obviously lack.
Well, thank you so much for your service, “Captain”.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, General, U.S. Army (Ret.)
@David K Winnett Jr:
Briefly, to your mind, what did O’Reilly actually claim over the years about his reporting from the Falklands war zone?
Provide sources that can be checked. Whatever O’Reilly said this week isn’t real relevant–it’s much more important what he’s said and written over the last 10 years.
Your military experiences, don’t bring them up, they are irrelevant to O’Reilly’s story. And your claims just read like a distraction.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/02/20/oreilly-responds-to-war-reporting-criticisms/
@JF Decker
You are a giant fing moron. It is amazing how utterly stupid someone could be. O’Reilly didnt prove ANYTHING. If he isnt lying why hasnt he answered the questions from Corn? He also published in his book that he saved a mans life. HE DIDNT OReilly is a liar. Also why dont you look up how OReilly claimed to TWO different reporters that he won the prestigious Peabody Award for journalism. He didnt. HE LIED. He is a pathological LIAR
O’Reilly fans have replied with typical irrationality — this piece obviously got on their radar. Too bad they, and Bill, don’t deal more in truth.
Bill is a joke. Fox News is a joke. Period. All the bubble boys have one thing in common. To lie and mislead you with creative spin. Bill needs to go. He had zero credibility in real news and facts. He has only a political agenda. I respect Brian Williams 100 times more.
http://lyingliar.com/?p=18
O’Reilly never said that he won a Peabody. Al Franken spun that story.
In response to Captain David retired from the Marine Corps, thanks captain for your service, to be fair I’m sure your service was more in line with protecting the interests of our Nation for that I personally am grateful. The interests of our Nation though versus the interests of those who have the power to send our youth in harms way, I’ll leave for another day. The O’reilly issue, just like the Brian Williams issue though wasn’t about anything other than the interests of these men. I’m guessing Williams indiscretion wasn’t at all defended by you captian in fact I’m going to guess that the defense of these men will go along party line. I myself am apolitical, I hate both party’s equally although lately I’ve found the right to be slightly more disgusting than the left. Kind of along the same lines as how the 2 accused of fabrication handled there accusers. The left leaning American Media reporter Brian Williams knew he lied when he was called out, he apologized and went radio silent. The right leaning Bill O’reilly handled his lie and accuser much different than Williams but no different than what you would expect Bill O’reilly to handle accusations against him. First attacking the person, then attacking his perceived political leaning conspirators that put him up to the attack. O’reilly, makes a case for being completely delusional to think that he’s so important to the Republican Party that people actually sent down to a meeting and plotted out a way to bring embarrassment to those on the right by embarrassing O’reilly. The exact ideology that makes it hard to like the direction of our country’s right leaning conservatives. There thought process is flat out “scary” when considering the possibility that a right leaning conservative might be our nations next leader. Someone with a belief system and a way of doing things just like Bill O’reilly. His modus operandi for dealing with accusations first attack the accusor, tie the accuser together with the left leaning liberal media, put in words like conspiracy and plotting, and most importantly be the loudest most boorish person in the room. Quite an intelligent strategy our right wing conservative Republican party that Jeb Bush will do all he can to distance himself from so he doesn’t get the viritrol that is being spewed out doesn’t get on him. The Republican Party is very much in trouble for the foreseeable future. The Republican nominee had to distance himself for half of the party, Romney would have been President but he started distancing himself for this “scary” non-senscal half of what is today’s Republican Party. People like O’reilly, Donal Trump, the 2 rich brothers whose name escapes me, not to mention most of those who tried to get the nomination but have as much chance of becoming president as I do, in fact I probably have a better chance than the Ted Cruz’s of the world simply because people don’t know me, if you know Ted Cruz and his plan’s you might like the plans or hate the plans you might even like the guy, but he is flat out not electable because he’s the “spooky” half of the Republican Party. The half that identifies with a guy like Bill O’reilly who can flat out lie about his reporting in war zones, it’s documented on tape, it’s undeniable that he’s lying, yet like Captain David and the Spooky element of the Republican Party they face the truth stare it in the eye and flat out deny it, then blame the messenger start ranting about leftist conspiracy and make the veins in your head and neck stand out. Spin, spin and spin just because there not electable by popular vote doesn’t mean they don’t have a loyal army that have drank the cool aid and somehow deny the fact that O’reilly’s been lying for years about what a tough guy he is because without his act having “machismo” the whole image and the act he put’s on doesn’t cut the mustard. Come to find O’reilly stumbled on to the whole tough guy image while he was going through a tough time in life when he was questioning his own crisis of fast approaching irrelevance due to the fact he’s getting old and his inner feelings of questioning his own sexuality. Shoot with all that going on he doesn’t know what day it is let alone whether or not his lying would catch up with him. The point is every conservative, right wing, who’s thinks we should go back into Iraq to find those WMD’s justifying a war tying Hussein together with Al Quida to justify a war. Personally, that was the last time I would give the leader of the country I loved the benefit of the doubt without question when it didn’t seem logical that 9/11 and the Twin Towers somehow led to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. That’s the last time I wouldn’t think for myself and simply defer to love of county and the trust of my commander in chief knowing whats best for our country. Now that was a tough pill to swallow, but that’s the last time I leaned right. They lie and then cover there lies with lies and they have a vocal following believing that god, country, and whatever the right wing conservative party is preaching is the Kool Aid I’m drinking, to defend O’reilly after intelligent discourse and learing all you can about the situation makes you party to that lie. I was reading the other day about the latest indictment by the right towards Obama was a simple statment “he doesn’t love our country”. After being both I do know that loving your country is no way to make rational decisions on issues. As an example Captain David who wrote earlier is retired from the Marine Corp. and I’m sure he loves his country. That love gets twisted though and decision are made against evidence to the contrary along with common sense. Capt. David defended O’reilly talking about misinformation and using the same words O’reilly used to defend himself and attack his accuser. But I’m guessing David took O’relly’s side for no other reason than his blindness to reality when he’s dealing with the ideology of the conservative party and those that spew the vitrol and kool’aid they want there band of blind brothers to preach. Half the commenters on here back O’reilly even though he wasn’t serving interests of the right wing at the time but only serving numero uno who is all the leaders of the Right Wing Conservative care about which is themselves. That becomes obvious but you had at one time had to be right leaning like myself to clearly recognize the symptoms. O’reilly has an army of people blaming everyone else for something completely forgetting that O’reilly was on tape obviously lying serving only himself with those lies yet he’s got an army of clones preaching spooky things. That’s why children should stay away from the spooks, there scary because there serving a different master than those that are following, using the most powerful tool in the box, don’t you love your country?
One would think that O’Reilly fans would just take solace in his rocking tight pants.
Al B:
You can’t link after the fact explanations from O’Reilly without also linking the well established fact that over the last 12 years, or so, he’s been caught saying he was in a war zone in the Falklands, not in Argentina during the Falklands War. And he made this Falklands war zone claim in writing.
This appears to be a lie from the link you provided:
“I never said I was on the Falkland Islands as Corn purports. I said I covered the Falklands War, which I did.” O’Reilly.
And O’Reilly has been caught making things up before: There was a significant lie he told about investigating the JFK assassination in the late 1970s. He claimed to arrived at the door of an important witness, and likely one of the men who organized the assassination, just as that important witness was committing “suicide” with a gun. O’Reilly even went as far as to say he heard the gun shot.
O’Reilly made it up.
Your behavior is similar to the New York Times’ reporting of the Williams lie immediately after he admitted it. The Times, not quoting Williams, tried to pretend that Williams was only guilty of a false memory.
Initial Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/business/media/brian-williamsapologizes-for-saying-he-was-shot-down-over-iraq.html?_r=0
Relevant quotation trying to sell the idea that Williams was simply mistaken:
“The NBC News anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday for mistakenly claiming he had been on a helicopter that was shot down by ground fire in Iraq in 2003.”
Now it is possible that both Williams and O’Reilly have addled brains, but then neither should be employed as news readers/reporters/editors.
So if your O’Reilly claims are accurate, you have to provide much more than a simple denial by O’Reilly–especially given his history.
they all lie……the all embellish….bill o’reilly has always carried himself like he knows everything…oreilly is an asshole, has been for over 20 years….oreilly has an answer and solution for everything in the world….oh yea , he is not a racist(sic)……
Cenzo
Get a life. I don’t know or care about what water cooler you drank from, I’m just glad it doesn’t exist in the real world. Fox News has always dealt in the facts. Do they not provide at the very least a balanced debate? That is one thing you do not get from any other news source including the major news outlets, they haven’t delivered fair reporting in the last 20 years. They always have a far left agenda, giggling over the next piece of drool to fall from their mother Obama’s lying mouth. Let us hear some about those lies, something every american should be absolutely furious over. His lies are big and long enough to circle the earth twice. But you know what, your precious left news sources ask him nothing, His Attorney General Holder is asked to quack for them, “REALLY”? Don.t get mad at fox for asking the questions that every real american wants to know the answer to, they sure as hell are not going to get it from MSLSD or any other so called mainstream news sources. That is after all why they are number one in all the ratings. This guy who wrote the column is obviously a left wing zealot. But he has a job to do. Sell Copies. He has obviously sold you a Bill of goods. O’Reilly had overwhelming evidence and witness to back his claim and did so convincingly. Be a part of the solution, not the problem, get informed. And until you do, shut up and get the facts before you run off at the mouth.
James Carrier, you have way to much time on your hands. That was the longest and stupidest drool I have ever read. You make English Lit look like a walk in the park. Talk about someone in love with themselves. Read your column, it drips with self promotion of your own perspective. You didn’t write that against Bill, you wrote it to make yourself feel important. You are just as important as he is…..think about it……….
Regardless of this story, anyone who believe O’Reilly is an honest upfront anchor must be drinking. He is the master manipulator on Fox News team.
This is getting real absurd. O’Reilly is a liar and he is no better than Brian Williams and if BO had any decency and respect for the truth he would resign and/or Fox should fire him.
@David K Winnett Jr+Al B:
Did a very tiny bit more checking.
Here’s the problem for you two and O’Reilly: Bill O’Reilly clearly wrote that he was in an “active war zone” during the Falklands war.
Problem he wasn’t on the Falklands or aboard a ship in the surrounding ocean. And no part of mainland Argentina was ever considered part of the war zone.
This means Bill O’Reilly lied in his denial.
Did Bill O’Reilly go to say Beirut in say 1983? That was a war zone. Or Afghanistan? Did he go out into the country side of Nicaragua in say 1985? Nope, to all three.
Good God, the trolls are loose at FAIR, no? War is hell–but war movies and war stories? They’re really hell.
Ellis Baxter:
This JFK assassination lie is reasonably well known about too.
The right is always accusing US of “drinking the Kool-Aid”.
Based on the replies to this post, there’s none left, O’Reilly’s fans have monopolized it.
Really excellent and informative post by Jim Naureckas.
“We won Peabody Awards. . . . We won Peabody awards. . . . A program that wins a Peabody Award, the highest award in journalism, and you’re going to denigrate it?”
–Bill O’Reilly, 5/19/00
Neither Bill O’Reilly nor Inside Edition, his tabloid TV show, have ever won a Peabody.
Bill Is a liar just as Brian is a liar…Bill needs the 6 month boot just like Brian got…
Yep I have watched the factor since its inception but if he is not given the Brian Williams I am done.
to David K. Witnett Jr.: judging from the wars the USG has engaged in since WWII, serving in the US armed forces does not require moral courage at all. The US soldier has become a “Good German.” Either way, having been in war sanctifies you in what way? Moreover, what exactly does that have to do with the serial lies that someone such as O’Reilly engages in?
When it comes to war, I think I will listen to Smedley Butler rather than to someone such as you.
While O’Reilly is a lying SoS, his lies, like Brian Williams’, are trivial compared to the lies the entire mainstream media told to encourage the US public to believe there was a legitimate reason to invade and destroy Iraq, as well as the lies that included having former military men pretend they were non-partisan observers when they were actually paid propagandists for war profiteers.
All this attention paid to trifles is not doing the public any service, when the approved lies are so much worse–including helping the Obama regime to slaughter Anwar al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman with drones by claiming Anwar was an “operational” member of al Qaeda, rather than a propagandist, without any due process and without providing even a dishonest excuse for the 16-year-old son’s death.
So, O’Really’s been a lying sack of poop for a looong time. good to know.
Is anyone surprised that Bill O’Reilly is a liar? He works for a as phony news organization that reports lies as news.
those shards of glass hitting oh’Reeeeally after throwing those stones must hurt.
http://www.people.com/article/brian-williams-more-potential-fabrications-nbc-investigation
Interesting read
You might be interested to join the following free group for like-minded critics of Bill O’Reilly’s behaviour.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Bill.O.Reilly.Critics/
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