“The Mother Jones piece, ultimately if you boil it down, comes down to this semantic question. You said you covered a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War….Looking back, do you wish you had worded it differently?”
Howard Kurtz posed this question to Bill O’Reilly on Sunday morning, in an attempt to distill three days of media chatter over alleged embellishments in O’Reilly’s reporting. The accusation: Mother Jones claims that there are contradictions in O’Reilly’s descriptions of his 1982 reporting in Argentina for CBS. The follow up: In a 1700-word Facebook post, Eric Engberg, a former CBS News correspondent who was also in Argentina, said O’Reilly’s tale is suspicious. The wording in question: O’Reilly has said, “I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands…” even though he never made it to the Falkland Islands and instead reported from Buenos Aires.
So does the Fox News star wish he had worded it differently?
“No,” O’Reilly answered Kurtz. “When you have soldiers and military police firing into the crowd, as the New York Times reports, and you have people injured and hurt and you’re in the middle of that, that’s the definition. This is splitting hairs trying anything they can to bring down me because of the Brian Williams situation.”
Read more from the Washington Post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/02/22/bill-oreilly-responds-to-accusations-of-his-brian-williams-problem-saying-buenos-aires-not-the-falklands-was-his-war-zone/
Cenk Uygur (http://www.twitter.com/cenkuygur) host of The Young Turks discusses O’Reilly’s response and reactions from other CBS reporters. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
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Comments
So when do the rest of the republicans and democrats denounce this behavior? Since he virtually crucifies people on his program on a daily basis why is he given carte blanche to lie and then not be immediately fired for lack of journalistic integrity or lack of ethics or lack of character? This is someone who is at the top of the Fox News party, corporation, and yet he is a known liar. Or is that program of his “not technically news” so he can squeeze thru with the assistance of his slimy mucous covered skin? Journalism is meant, at its roots, to inform the public of the truth. To show the people what they cannot themselves eyewitness, but that which is true, informing the public of future history. If he keeps his job there is no way the media will ever be able to say it serves the people at large. Hosts should not be celebrities nor have personal political ties with members of government parties. Fox News is personally responsible for death. How? Their lies facilitate a motivation to go to war across the globe while allowing their staff to openly lie to the public about who/what/where/when/why and also how. What else has been told to us as fact that’s a bold-faced lie? Rather, how many thousands of citizens have been duped, by Fox’s fear tactics? This is not the press the world needs. Journalists who get caught lying should immediately be fired and sued. This is not Nazi Germany and this is not 1939. This is 2015 and we should not accept these individuals to be the watchdogs when really they are the lapdogs of their government and business elite cronies. Shame on you William O’Reilly. Shame on your house. Shame on you “Fox News.” Shame on those in power who lack the character to stand up for what is right. Having no integrity means no one should watch that network ever again, even with all the shiny banners and “ALERTS”. They don’t represent journalism, instead, they enact psychological manipulation on the masses. That is not FREEDOM. Get $$$ out of politics, make regulations against politicians making money from their power. I challenge all our politicians to sit down for a polygraph and answer 20 questions. The same 20 questions. If they refuse they should be considered cowards and probably liars. If they take it and lie, they will claim that a polygraph isn’t admissible in court, and for those who pass probably are out of the loop. I don’t want CHANGE, I want change. I don’t need FREEDOM, I need freedom. My does not come off a color code it comes from real life and real truths. Fox News and Bill O’Reilly, Hannity and the rest all deserve to go away. Let the future happen stop enabling the declining status quo. You are a dying breed and you don’t have the honor for an honorable death. Yours will be celebrated by a freer public and a smarter one. Good riddance.