Bill O’Reilly’s brand on TV news is one of confrontation and — some would suggest — self-serving excess.
OK, I’ll suggest it, too. O’Reilly is full of himself at times.
He’s been all over the Brian Williams story and the now-admitted “misremembering” about the NBC News anchor being shot down in Iraq in 2003.
Well, the self-proclaimed bloviator is now facing a challenge of his own, from Mother Jones magazine, over whether O’Reilly actually witnessed combat during the brief war in the remote Falkland Islands in 1982, when Great Britain sent a flotilla to its territorial possession to rid the place of Argentine troops who had taken the island illegally.
“I was there,” O’Reilly has contended all along. Mother Jones disputes O’Reilly’s assertion.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/bill-o%E2%80%99reilly%E2%80%99s-falklands-war-coverage-challenged-in-explosive-new-report/ar-BBhLZxs?ocid=ansWrap11
This story is still developing, but as MSN reported, O’Reilly has been quick — imagine that — to respond to the allegations that Mother Jones has made that the correspondent did not face hostile fire, as he has reported for more than three decades.
MSN reports: “The (Mother Jones) website’s David Corn highlights several instances where the Fox News primetime host claimed to have covered the 1982 fighting in the Falklands War between Argentina and England up close–the issue is few reporters were able to cover the conflict up close due to the remote location of the war zone.”
I’m not going to make an assessment here of whether O’Reilly fibbed about his war coverage. I will, however, suggest that the Fox News TV talk show star’s aggressive reporting of others’ troubles — such as Brian Williams — exposes him to careful scrutiny by other watchdogs to ensure that he’s as righteous as he claims to be.
Here’s the Mother Jones article that O’Reilly asserts is “bulls***.” It’s lengthy. It’s also quite interesting and carefully detailed.
See for yourself. Is David Corn merely a “left-wing assassin,” as O’Reilly asserts, or is he an aggressive reporter?
As for O’Reilly, it appears he has to explain himself — without resorting to name-calling.