Monday, February 23, 2015

Falklands Drama ~ Cornered Narcissist Bill O'Reilly Lashes Out

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Recently, talking-head Brian Williams of NBC News was suspended for six months after embellishing past journalistic experiences.

After it happened, Fox News and Bill O'Reilly were quick to gloat about how Williams was a symptom of the Left-Wing Liberal Media they love to hate.

From Mediaite
O’Reilly spoke of how the Founders believed in a free and honest press and bemoaned how the current American press isn’t “half as responsible as the men who forged the nation.”
But O’Reilly didn’t just go after Williams, he said this is about a culture of deception in the liberal media. They need to, he said, “stop the corruption and begin telling the truth without an agenda,” otherwise the public’s trust in them will continue to plummet.
. . . he ended by telling his viewers, “Think about other news agencies that are distorting the facts.”

But it turns out, Bill O has been spinning lies for some time about his reporting in Argentina during the War in the Falklands, making it sound as if he was in the midst of combat when he never even set foot on the islands. At the time, he was covering the remote war for CBS News, a fact he has written about in his best-selling books and discussed on his show many times, saying he was in "fire fights" and "war zones" in Argentina.

But neither he nor any of his CBS colleagues were in the Falklands because the Argentine government wouldn't allow them there.

An article in Mother Jones magazine is calling out O'Reilly for his lies.

Read the Original Article:
Mother Jones: Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem with the Falklands War






Here's just one quote from O'Reilly about the Falklands Via Media Matters

O'REILLY: I -- I was in a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War, OK?

KEVIN: Mm-hmm.

O'REILLY: And I can tell you when the Kool-Aid hits the fan, OK, nobody is locking in on anybody else. Nobody.

KEVIN: And you're right.

O'REILLY: OK, ad --

KEVIN: I know (inaudible; overlapping dialogue)

O'REILLY: -- adrenaline -- adrenaline surges and you veterans out there listening right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about here. Adrenaline surges, your senses become very attune, much sharper than they are ordinarily, and you are locked in, focused in, on your survival and achieving the means of staying alive.


From Mother Jones, the Day After
O'Reilly responded to the story by launching a slew of personal invective. He did not respond to the details of the story. Instead, he called me a "liar," a "left-wing assassin," and a "despicable guttersnipe." He said that I deserve "to be in the kill zone." (You can read one of my responses here.) And in his show-opening "Talking Points memo" monologue on Friday evening, he continued the name-calling.
In a way, it's impossible to win a debate with O'Reilly because he is not bound by reality. In response to the article, he told Fox News' media reporter, Howard Kurtz, "Nobody was on the Falklands and I never said I was on the island, ever." Yet our article included video of O'Reilly saying in 2013, "I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands, where my photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us." Note the words "war zone" and "in the Falklands."

UPDATE: CBS News has released their Falklands Coverage:



As Mother Jones points out, this video doesn't support O'Reilly's claims:

. . . rather than bolstering O'Reilly's description of the anti-government protest he says he covered as a "combat situation," the tape corroborates the accounts of other journalists who were there and who have described it as simply a chaotic, violent protest.

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Other correspondents with CBS who were in Buenos Aires with O'Reilly refuted his claims, only to be slammed by Bill-O.

From CNN
Eric Engberg, a CBS correspondent who was also in Buenos Aires at the time, defended Corn in a Facebook post on Friday and said, "It was not a war zone or even close. It was an 'expense account zone.'"
Longtime NBC News correspondent George Lewis, who was also there at the time, agreed with Engberg, writing on Facebook, "Cushiest war I ever covered."
Did O'Reilly's photographer get "run down" and bloodied?
CNN has interviewed seven people who were there for CBS, and none of them recall anyone from the network being injured.
"If somebody got hurt, we all would have known," Alvarez said.
. . . O'Reilly has repeatedly defended his claims, including on Fox News on Sunday morning. "I don't know if he was there," O'Reilly said, implying that Engberg may not have witnessed the riot. He called Engberg "Room Service Eric," alleging he often stayed in his hotel during unfolding news events.

Eric Engberg pushed back in an interview with Huff Post



(My transcript)

Eric Engberg: He's completely nutty. There were five correspondents working that story for CBS. Four of them had been on that remote site for weeks because the Argentine government would not allow us to go to the Falkland Islands. We were hoping we could get in, but when we couldn't we had to stay in Buenos Aires and file stories... When the riot happened, and actually it was a slow-developing riot - O'Reilly has said in one of his books that the "crowd stormed the Presidential Palace." That is not what happened. What happened was the stupid government of Argentina, which was run by a collection - a junta - of murderous generals - they announced that they were going to hold a speech that evening at the Presidential Palace and that the public should come and watch the speech.

In the meantime, the British released the information about how the Argentines surrendered. And as people learned of the fact that the war was over, and that they had lost, they became increasingly angry and more and more of them started coming to the palace. So you had a large assembly of people, 4 or 5 thousand, who were angry at the government. I was one of those who was there. The other three correspondents were there. I frankly don't know where O'Reilly was. But the people who were there for our company will assert that 'yes, Engberg was there with his camera crew.' Does anybody believe that a reporter who is covering a war from 1200 miles away, hearing that there was a riot at the National Palace, would sit in his hotel room?

Engberg: It's ludicrous. It's nutty - He's Nutty! ... Nutty about me - he says I was hiding in my hotel room, which is another one of those classic O'Reilly responses to any kind of criticism of him. It's always to fire back some personal slur at whoever made the criticism, instead of to respond to the criticism.

Next, Bill O'Reilly attacked Bob Schieffer, veteran journalist and moderator of the Sunday news show, Face the Nation, accusing him of stealing and plagiarizing his stories in Argentina. Yeah, that's really going to turn out well . . .

From a Fox interview with Howard Kurtz, Via Crooks and Liars
BillO then blasted CBS's Bob Schieffer for "big footing" his story which happens all the time in the news business.

O'Reilly: If you write an article and send it in and another reporter put there name on the article, what's that called? it begins with a "p."

 Kurtz: I've always called it "big footing" and you're not happy if that happens.

 O'Reilly: What is it called in print? it begins with a "p."

 Kurtz: I'll let you tell me.

 O'Reilly: Plagiarism.

Kurtz: Oh, if it's your colleague and you're working together
O'Reilly:I wasn't working together with these guys.

Hmmm, but he WAS working with both Engberg and Schieffer, because they all worked for CBS News.His lying knows no bounds.






















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