'I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake'
WASHINGTON — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.
Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.
The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
Williams told his Nightly News audience that the erroneous claim was part of a "bungled attempt" to thank soldiers who helped protect him in Iraq in 2003. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. “I want to apologize.”
Late Wednesday, Williams’ Twitter account, with 212,000 followers, appeared to have been wiped clean.
Williams made the claim about the incident while presenting NBC coverage of the tribute to the retired command sergeant major at the Rangers game Friday. Fans gave the soldier a standing ovation.
“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews.
That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists.
“No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” he said Wednesday.
The helicopters, along with the NBC crew, remained on the ground at a forward operating base west of Baghdad for two or three days, where they were surrounded by an Army unit with Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams M-1 tanks.
Miller said he never saw any direct fire on the position from Iraqi forces.
The claim rankled Miller as well as soldiers aboard the formation of 159th Aviation Regiment Chinooks that were flying far ahead and did come under attack during the March 24, 2003, mission.
One of the helicopters was hit by two rocket-propelled grenades — one did not detonate but passed through the airframe and rotor blades — as well as small arms fire.
“It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it,” said Lance Reynolds, who was the flight engineer. “It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”
Reynolds said Williams and the NBC cameramen arrived in a helicopter 30 to 60 minutes after his damaged Chinook made a rolling landing at an Iraqi airfield and skidded off the runway into the desert.
He said Williams approached and took photos of the damage, but Reynolds brushed them off because the crew was assessing damage and he was worried that his wife, who was alone in Germany, might see the news report.
“I wanted to tell her myself everything was all right before she got news of this happening,” Reynolds said.
The NBC crew stayed only for about 10 minutes and then went to see the Army armored units that had been guarding the nearby Forward Operating Base Rams and came out to provide a security perimeter around the aircraft. Tim Terpak, the command sergeant major who accompanied Williams to the Rangers game, was among those soldiers, and the two struck up a friendship.
Miller, Reynolds and Mike O’Keeffe, who was a door gunner on the damaged Chinook, said they all recall NBC reporting that Williams was aboard the aircraft that was attacked, despite it being false. The NBC online archive shows the network broadcast a news story on March 26, 2003, with the headline, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.”
Williams disputed Wednesday claims the initial reports were inaccurate, saying he originally reported he was in another helicopter but later confused the events. In a 2008 NBC blog post with his byline, he wrote that the “Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor.”
O’Keeffe said the incident has bothered him since he and others first saw the original report after returning to Kuwait.
“Over the years it faded,” he said, “and then to see it last week it was — I can’t believe he is still telling this false narrative.”
.. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
Яob @robx_d 14h14 hours ago
#BrianWilliamsMemories I remember a time landing in Bosnia and dodging sniper fire with Hillary Clinton. It was harrowing.
Kurt Richards @IAmKurtacus 14h14 hours ago
#BrianWilliamsMemories trying to keep that bus above 55 mph was the hardest thing I've ever done.
AG @AG_Conservative 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I wasn't part of the Tet Offensive. I just ate at a Vietnamese restaurant a few decades later. #BrianWilliamsMemories
jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I didn't storm the beach at Normandy. I just had a friend named Norman. #BrianWilliamsMemories
Marty Lang @marty_lang 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I did not help raise the flag at Iwo Jima, I just dug a hole & installed a flagpole in my front yard. #BrianWilliamsMemories
Avraham Bronstein @AvBronstein 13h13 hours ago
I did not, in fact, witness the Last Supper. In retrospect, I took communion. #BrianWilliamsMemories
If military fabulism weren't so common I would be angrier, as it stands it is just sad. I would think this would sink any credibility he had, as it isn't something you "misremember" for decades, but I have my doubts.
Eh, I sort of sympathize as I've been in a similar situation. Yesterday I had told my coworkers that we had come under a chemical attack, but today I now realize that I just misremembered the consequences of my lunchtime burrito.
Ouze wrote: Eh, I sort of sympathize as I've been in a similar situation. Yesterday I had told my coworkers that we had come under a chemical attack, but today I now realize that I just misremembered the consequences of my lunchtime burrito.
heh...
Speaking of empathy...
Dan Rather Supports Brian Williams: He's an 'Honest, Decent Man' http://t.co/3nWDr6brgN pic.twitter.com/EAXynIc69P
Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
Ouze wrote: Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
I was under the impression that Rather continued to try and push his incorrect claims after the evidence did not support it
Ouze wrote: Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
I was under the impression that Rather continued to try and push his incorrect claims after the evidence did not support it
"It's fake, but accurate".
That's the line you're looking for...
Maybe not exactly analogous, but definitely two peas in the same fething pod.
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
That's how it works unfortunately.
Could even be that the people who knew better don't watch his show and never heard the claim, I know Id never watch it.
Everytime someone says a big controversy and ends it with gate. I immediately think of just a giant gate, and think to myself oh boy heres another one of those.
I think this is horrible don't get me wrong, but seriously why end it with 'gate'?
That sucks because of the fact that, were there to ever have a scandal involving (for example) the Golden Gate Bridge, I'll never see the Gategate I've been secretly hoping since this started. The best I'll see is a weak Gateghazi.
d-usa wrote: Hillary gets her own cigar wet? Hillarygate!
Actually, that is a little confusing. How is she getting the cigar wet? I mean, I guess it might get a little slobbery if she smokes it, though probably not much because I'd imagine she'd be dainty about it, or have a aid smoke it for her. I don't get it.
d-usa wrote: Hillary gets her own cigar wet? Hillarygate!
Actually, that is a little confusing. How is she getting the cigar wet? I mean, I guess it might get a little slobbery if she smokes it, though probably not much because I'd imagine she'd be dainty about it, or have a aid smoke it for her. I don't get it.
d-usa wrote: Hillary gets her own cigar wet? Hillarygate!
Actually, that is a little confusing. How is she getting the cigar wet? I mean, I guess it might get a little slobbery if she smokes it, though probably not much because I'd imagine she'd be dainty about it, or have a aid smoke it for her. I don't get it.
There is a....very detailed.....government report that will explain it.
d-usa wrote: Hillary gets her own cigar wet? Hillarygate!
Actually, that is a little confusing. How is she getting the cigar wet? I mean, I guess it might get a little slobbery if she smokes it, though probably not much because I'd imagine she'd be dainty about it, or have a aid smoke it for her. I don't get it.
There is a....very detailed.....government report that will explain it.
There's an international report being prepared as well
chaos0xomega wrote: I find it odd that -boat never became a suffix for controversy (as in swiftboat)
Because that isn't how the term is used. Swiftboat became a term to describe a form of political attack when John Kerry was running for President. When Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was formed and began to attack Kerry's credibility (some say unfairly), this type of smear campaign was coined as swiftboating in the press.
How do you mis-remember coming under RPG fire? I'm pretty sure that is one life experience that is likely to stay with you.
+1
I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were talking about the possibility of him making a false memory with a psychologist that studies memories and such. She was trying to be nice and say it's possible but that was what I kept thinking. I mean I've had false memories before as well, who hasn't, but I find it hard to believe you could make THAT up
How do you mis-remember coming under RPG fire? I'm pretty sure that is one life experience that is likely to stay with you.
+1
I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were talking about the possibility of him making a false memory with a psychologist that studies memories and such. She was trying to be nice and say it's possible but that was what I kept thinking. I mean I've had false memories before as well, who hasn't, but I find it hard to believe you could make THAT up
Given the fact that he started "mis-remembering" as soon as he got back to base after seeing the damaged Chinook I hope you forgive me for being skeptical of any claim he suffered false memories.
Tom Brokaw wants Brian Williams fired By Emily Smith and Kenneth GargerFebruary 5, 2015 | 11:05pm
You know you’re in trouble when Tom Brokaw is out for your blood.
NBC’s most revered journalist is furious that Brian Williams is still in the anchor chair after he sheepishly admitted he hadn’t traveled on a helicopter hit by enemy fire.
“Brokaw wants Williams’ head on a platter,” an NBC source said. “He is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report.”
On Wednesday, Williams, 55, acknowledged that he had repeatedly said he was aboard a chopper that had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during a 2003 reporting trip to Iraq, when he was actually safely traveling in a different aircraft.
Brokaw, 74, was still the “Nightly News” anchor when Williams came back from his Iraq expedition — and an insider said he knew the story Williams later spouted was bunk.
“Tom Brokaw and [former NBC News President] Steve Capus knew this was a false story for a long time and have been extremely uncomfortable with it,” the source said.
NBC News execs had counseled him to stop telling the tale.
Williams still took the anchor’s seat for his “Nightly News” broadcast Thursday evening — and was working at 30 Rock all day despite calls for his dismissal. He didn’t address the issue during the broadcast.
“He is not going to be suspended or reprimanded in any way. He has the full support of NBC News,” a network source said.
Modal TriggerMany of Williams’ colleagues believe his claim that he simply “conflated” two versions of what happened in 2003.
“There have been meetings about it all day. They are taking it very seriously,” the NBC source said.
“But we believe that Brian’s apology on the air speaks for himself. He admitted over time he conflated the events.”
NBC brass hasn’t been talking to lower-level employees about the situation, leaving people in a panic, the insider said.
“NBC bosses don’t understand how serious this is. Nobody in a leadership position is talking to the troops. Nobody has addressed it,” the source said.
One longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions had a few dirty words to describe the celebrated anchor, calling him a “real pompous piece of s–t.”
“He’s an a–hole,” he fumed. “He’s not a journalist. He’s a reader.”
“Oh, the fireworks that are going off inside,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. He’s the face on NBC. He’s a liar.
“Everyone knew it.”
On Friday, Brokaw responded to reports that he wanted Williams axed.
“I have neither demanded nor suggested Brian be fired,” Brokaw said in an email to The Huffington Post. “His future is up to Brian and NBC News executives.”
Kind of surprised Mr. Williams still has a job. He probably shouldn't.
You can't fire everyone who lies and misrepresents stories on news networks. America wouldn't have any news channels left Fox should be the first to go.
I don't understand why NBC vacillated on this (they initially made noises of support). I mean, this guy admitted he lied about something on the air repeatedly, you don't need to think about that for a week or whatever. You don't need Colombo to solve that case. When you're a newscaster, and there is an element of public trust in your work, I think honesty is paramount.
I mean, I feel like that meeting could have been:
"Did you admit to lying about this?"
"Well, yes, I misremembered. See, the thing is..."
"No, shut up. You're fired, excuse me, we're right-sizing. Get your stuff and go."
I don't know how much I believe that he actually owns a piece, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised one bit if locals and/or the Chinese (or anyone else that handled the thing) started to sell pieces as souvenirs.
Ahtman wrote: Apparently Williams has stepped down from his job. I thought about a link but it is Sunday.
He stepped down from his position, temporarily. In other words, he's catching gak and doesn't like it, so he's going to take a vacation and hope everyone forgets he's a prick.
d-usa wrote: Well, looks like someone is finally getting into trouble for lying about Iraq.
*ducks*
Apparently getting in trouble is just a six month suspension at NBC.
Deborah Turness wrote:From: "Deborah Turness (NBCUniversal)"
Date: Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 4:48 PM -0800
Subject: Brian Williams
To: "@NBC Uni NBC News All"
All,
We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.
Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision.
While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.
In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.
As Managing Editor and Anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times.
Steve Burke, Pat Fili and I came to this decision together. We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years. Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization.
As I’m sure you understand, this was a very hard decision. Certainly there will be those who disagree. But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action.
This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can – and should - all be proud of. We will get through this together.
Steve Burke asked me to share the following message.
“This has been a painful period for all concerned and we appreciate your patience while we gathered the available facts. By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate. Brian’s life’s work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone’s trust.”
"Was Williams lying? Maybe. Although it's hard to think how someone as high-profile as Williams thought he could get away with fabricating a story that is so easy to verify.
Could it have been an innocent error? I think so."
"False memories "are much more common that people intuitively think" and "should be considered as a possible explanation in cases like this," psychologist Chris Chabris tweeted yesterday."
"One group of researchers asked 5,000 participants if they recalled a fake political event taking place, such as President Barack Obama shaking hands with former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news," they found."
""Because memory is reconstructive, it is subject to confabulation -- confusing an event that happened to someone else with one that happened to you, or coming to believe that you remember something that never happened at all," wrote psychologists Caroll Tavris and Elliot Aronson in their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). "Memories create our stories, but our stories also create our memories. Once we have a narrative, we shape our memories to fit into it.""
"I wonder, though, how much all of us fool ourselves when it comes to investing or other parts of our lives."
I think the article has a really interesting perspective. Whatever you want to think about Williams, and personally I just can't bring myself to care one way or the other, the fact is that all of us have stories we hold as really important parts of lives that are probably at least half fiction. Maybe what needs to come out of this is a little less certainty, and a little more humility in accepting that all of us are pretty flawed, even when it comes to something as simple as our own memories.
Quite the opposite. Traumatic experiences are often precisely what cause you to forget things. You might remember one or two details really well, or at least feel like you remember it really well, but you won't actually have as good a recollection as you might think. For example, witness testimony in crimes are very unreliable, with the witnesses often adamantly make claims that are completely contradictory to surveillance footage or audio recordings, even when there's no reason or motive for the witness to lie or alter their story. They simply don't remember things as well as they think they do.
Right, I get all that. Remembering specific things while stressed out can be problematic. Remembering whether or not you saw a specific thing through a passive medium like TV, sure, that too.
Remembering whether or not you you were physically at a certain event or not is a whole 'nother can of worms.
I can understand simple memories, but in a warzone? Those are not thing just simply forget.
It isn’t about forgetting. It’s about the brain straight up changing what we remember, without without any kind of ‘track changes’ process. We edit and re-edit our memories on a constant basis, and have no idea we ever did it. You should click on the link I gave, and follow some of the links in it, there's stuff in there about people becoming convinced they saw demonic possession.
Note I’m not saying Williams gets a free pass on this, just that odds are we all do it without realising it.
I can understand simple memories, but in a warzone? Those are not thing just simply forget.
It isn’t about forgetting. It’s about the brain straight up changing what we remember. It simplifies and dramatizes memories, without without any kind of ‘track changes’ process. We edit and re-edit our memories on a constant basis, and have no idea we ever did it.
Note I’m not saying Williams gets a free pass on this, just that odds are we all do it without realising it.
That is neato schmeato.
The problem with Williams is that this wasn't a "one off" episode. He's likely a serial fabulist... and as a head-honcho news anchor, that's troubling.
Bromsy wrote: Right, I get all that. Remembering specific things while stressed out can be problematic. Remembering whether or not you saw a specific thing through a passive medium like TV, sure, that too.
Remembering whether or not you you were physically at a certain event or not is a whole 'nother can of worms.
No seriously, follow the links. They've got people to believe they were part of things like demonic possessions that never happened at all.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't false memories take time to manifest themselves? If so how could this be the case with Williams who claimed to have been shot down very shortly after seeing the damaged helicopters
DarkLink wrote: Quite the opposite. Traumatic experiences are often precisely what cause you to forget things. You might remember one or two details really well, or at least feel like you remember it really well, but you won't actually have as good a recollection as you might think. For example, witness testimony in crimes are very unreliable, with the witnesses often adamantly make claims that are completely contradictory to surveillance footage or audio recordings, even when there's no reason or motive for the witness to lie or alter their story. They simply don't remember things as well as they think they do.
I have been in a few situations that i almost died and i remember them still, I can understand that under great duress the mind will try protect itself, but this is the other way around, he wasn't on the helicopter that was shot down.
DarkLink wrote: Quite the opposite. Traumatic experiences are often precisely what cause you to forget things. You might remember one or two details really well, or at least feel like you remember it really well, but you won't actually have as good a recollection as you might think. For example, witness testimony in crimes are very unreliable, with the witnesses often adamantly make claims that are completely contradictory to surveillance footage or audio recordings, even when there's no reason or motive for the witness to lie or alter their story. They simply don't remember things as well as they think they do.
I have been in a few situations that i almost died and i remember them still, I can understand that under great duress the mind will try protect itself, but this is the other way around, he wasn't on the helicopter that was shot down.
... the point is, memory is not nearly as reliable as people tend to think it is. It doesn't mean it's suddenly always wrong, or that there are hard-coded rules to what you can and can't remember, just that people misremembering stuff, even big important things, isn't as unusual as you might think.
The problem with Williams is that this wasn't a "one off" episode. He's likely a serial fabulist... and as a head-honcho news anchor, that's troubling.
Yeah, and I’m not saying to let Williams off. On that level exactly how this happened to Williams, as the station needs to send a message about honesty and accuracy and that means Williams cops it, at least in the short term.
I just read that article and thought it was an interesting insight in to how these kinds of things can happen, and maybe a bit of a message for all of us to be a little less certain of the things we believe.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't false memories take time to manifest themselves? If so how could this be the case with Williams who claimed to have been shot down very shortly after seeing the damaged helicopters
Ah, okay. If he was telling the story in its current form soon after the event, then changing memory isn't relevant. But the earliest report I can see is that he was telling a story similar to the current one in 2007, and that’d be five years after the event happened.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jehan-reznor wrote: I have been in a few situations that i almost died and i remember them still, I can understand that under great duress the mind will try protect itself, but this is the other way around, he wasn't on the helicopter that was shot down.
Yeah, again, this isn’t about the stress of the incident or anything like that. It’s just about what happens when you spend time re-telling any story, or even just thinking about the event and reliving it in your head. Every time you do there’s a chance you've changed the story just a little, wiped away some needless complexity or made events suit the overall narrative much more closely. Williams might have begun by thinking ‘that could have been my chopper’ until one day it was his chopper.
Bromsy wrote: Right, I get all that. Remembering specific things while stressed out can be problematic. Remembering whether or not you saw a specific thing through a passive medium like TV, sure, that too.
Remembering whether or not you you were physically at a certain event or not is a whole 'nother can of worms.
No seriously, follow the links. They've got people to believe they were part of things like demonic possessions that never happened at all.
Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem
The Fox News host has said he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached.
—By David Corn and Daniel Schulman | Thu Feb. 19, 2015 5:26 PM EST
After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don't withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in.
O'Reilly has 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."
Fox News and O'Reilly did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Here are instances when O'Reilly touted his time as a war correspondent during the Falklands conflict:
In his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America, O'Reilly stated, "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."
Conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, in a 2003 book, described how O'Reilly answered a question during a Washington panel discussion about media coverage of the Afghanistan war: "Rather than simply answer the question, O'Reilly began by trying to establish his own bona fides as a war correspondent. 'I've covered wars, okay? I've been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I've almost been killed three times, okay.'"
In a 2004 column about US soldiers fighting in Iraq, O'Reilly noted, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."
In 2008, he took a shot at journalist Bill Moyers, saying, "I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn't see him."
In April 2013, while discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, O'Reilly shared a heroic tale of his exploits in the Falklands war:
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. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I'm looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important.
Yet his own account of his time in Argentina in his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone, contains no references to O'Reilly experiencing or covering any combat during the Falklands war. In the book, which in part chronicles his troubled stint as a CBS News reporter, O'Reilly reports that he arrived in Buenos Aires soon before the Argentine junta surrendered to the British, ending the 10-week war over control of two territories far off the coast of Argentina. There is nothing in this memoir indicating that O'Reilly witnessed the fighting between British and Argentine military forces—or that he got anywhere close to the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off Argentina's shore and about 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires.
"Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands," says Bob Schieffer. "For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals."
Given the remote location of the war zone—which included the British territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, more than 1,400 miles offshore—few reporters were able to witness and report on the combat that claimed the lives of about 900 Argentine and British troops. The government in London only allowed about 30 British journalists to accompany its military forces. As Caroline Wyatt, the BBC's defense correspondent, recently noted, "It was a war in which a small group of correspondents and crews sailing with the Royal Navy were almost entirely dependent upon the military—not only for access to the conflict, but also for the means of reporting it back to the UK." And Robert Fox, one of the embedded British reporters, recalled, "We were, in all, a party of about 32-34 accredited journalists, photographers, television crew members. We were all white, male, and British. There was no embedded reporter from Europe, the Commonwealth or the US (though they tried hard enough), let alone from Latin America."
American reporters were not on the ground in this distant war zone. "Nobody got to the war zone during the Falklands war," Susan Zirinsky, a longtime CBS News producer who helped manage the network's coverage of the war from Buenos Aires, tells Mother Jones. She does not remember what O'Reilly did during his time in Argentina. But she notes that the military junta kept US reporters from reaching the islands: "You weren't allowed on by the Argentinians. No CBS person got there."
That's how Bob Schieffer, who was CBS News' lead correspondent covering the Falklands war, recalls it: "Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands. I came close. We'd been trying to get somebody down there. It was impossible." He notes that NBC News reporter Robin Lloyd was the only American network correspondent to reach the islands. "I remember because I got my butt scooped on that," Schieffer says. "He got out there and we were all trying to get there." (Lloyd tells Mother Jones that he managed to convince the Argentine military to let him visit Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, but he spent only a day there—and this was weeks before the British forces arrived and the fighting began.)
Schieffer adds, "For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals."
O'Reilly did see some action in Argentina—just not war action. He writes in The No Spin Zone that shortly after he hit Buenos Aires—where CBS News had set up a large bureau in the Sheraton hotel—thousands of Argentines took to the streets, angry at the military junta for having yielded to the Brits.
As he tells it in his book, O'Reilly, then 32 years old, raced to cover the event: "A major riot ensued and many were killed. I was right in the middle of it and nearly died of a heart attack when a soldier, standing about ten feet away, pointed his automatic weapon directly at my head." A television cameraman was trampled, journalists were banged up, and O'Reilly and others were teargassed. "After a couple of hours of this pandemonium," he recalls, "I managed to make it back to the Sheraton with the best news footage I have ever seen. This was major violence up close and personal, and it was an important international story."
The rest of the book's section on this episode is a resentful recounting of how O'Reilly was "big-footed" when CBS used his best-ever footage in a news report that featured Schieffer, not him. "I got the hell out of Argentina fast, landed in Miami, and raised a major ruckus at the CBS offices there," O'Reilly writes. Soon he "parted company" with CBS and took an anchor/reporter job in Boston. Schieffer notes that he and other CBS reporters also covered the protest, and that per common practice, all the footage gathered that day was pooled together for the report filed by the Buenos Aires bureau.
The protest O'Reilly covered in Buenos Aires was not combat. It occurred more than a thousand miles from the war zone—after the fighting was over.
O'Reilly's account of the protest in Buenos Aires is at odds with news reports from the time—including the report from his own bureau. The CBS Evening News that night aired about a minute of video of the protest, apparently including some of the footage that O'Reilly and his camera team had obtained. It showed angry Argentines yelling and denouncing the junta that had lost the war. The only act of violence in the spot was a man throwing a punch against the car of a Canadian news crew. On the segment, Schieffer reported, "There were arrests throughout the day. The police threatened to use tear gas at one point. Several North American television crews were jostled…An ABC camera team's car was stoned before the crew escaped." The CBS report said nothing about people being killed. It does not match O'Reilly's dramatic characterization of the event in his book; the video on the broadcast did not depict "major violence up close and personal."
Dispatches on the protest filed by reporters from the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and UPI note that thousands did take to the street, setting fires, breaking store windows, and that riot police did battle with protesters who threw rocks and sticks. They say tear gas was deployed; police clubbed people with nightsticks and fired rubber bullets; reporters were assaulted by demonstrators and by police; and a photojournalist was wounded in the legs by gunfire. But these media accounts did not report, as O'Reilly claims, that there were fatalities. The New York Times noted, "Several demonstrators were reported to have been injured, along with at least two reporters."
During a 2009 interview with a television station in the Hamptons, O'Reilly talked about reporting on the Buenos Aires protest, which he claimed other CBS journalists were too fearful to cover: "I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS news correspondents were hiding in the hotel." ("We were all out with our camera crews that day to cover the protest," Schieffer says. "I'd been out there with a crew too.")
O'Reilly noted that soldiers "were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the streets" with "real bullets." And he told of rescuing his South American cameraman, who had been trampled by the crowd: "The camera went flying. I saved the tape because it was unbelievable tape. But I dragged him off the street because he was bleeding from the ear and had hit his head on the concrete…The sound man is trying to save the camera…And then the army comes running down and the guy points the M-16. And I'm going, 'Periodista, no dispare,' which means, 'Journalist, don't shoot.' And I said, 'Por favor.' Please don't shoot…Then the guy lowered his gun and went away."
The protest in Buenos Aires was not combat. Nor was it part of the Falklands war. It happened more than a thousand miles from the war—after the fighting was over. Yet O'Reilly has referred to his work in Argentina—and his rescue of his cameraman—as occurring in a "war zone." And he once told a viewer who caught his show in Argentina, "Tell everybody down there I covered the Falklands war. They'll remember."
O'Reilly has frequently represented himself as a combat-hardened journalist—he has visited US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and reported from those countries—and he has referred to his assignment in Argentina to bolster this impression. On his television show in 1999, O'Reilly responded to a letter from a retired Air Force colonel, who said he had flown 123 missions over Vietnam and who criticized O'Reilly for supporting military action in Kosovo, by citing his Falklands war days: "Hey, Colonel, did you ever have a hostile point an M-16 at your head from 10 yards away? That happened to me while I was covering the Falklands war." In his 2013 book Keep It Pithy, he writes, "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America." During his radio show on January 13, 2005, he declared, "I've been in combat. I've seen it. I've been close to it." When a caller questioned him about this, O’Reilly shot back: "I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America." O'Reilly did not specify where these firefights occurred—in The No Spin Zone, the only South America assignment he writes about is his trip to Argentina—and then he hung up on the caller.
In The No Spin Zone, O'Reilly does write vividly about an assignment that took him to El Salvador during the country's civil war shortly after CBS News hired him as a correspondent in 1981. As O'Reilly recalls in the book, he and his crew drove for a full day to reach Morazán province, "a dangerous place," and headed to a small village called Meanguera, where, a Salvadoran captain claimed, guerrillas had wiped out the town. "Nobody in his right mind would go into the guerilla-controlled area," O'Reilly writes. But he did, and he notes he found a horrific scene: "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." He does not mention being in any firefight.
O'Reilly's account of his El Salvador mission is inconsistent with the report he filed for CBS News, which aired on May 20, 1982—shortly before he was dispatched to Buenos Aires. "These days Salvadoran soldiers appear to be doing more singing than fighting," O'Reilly said in the opening narration, pointing out that not much combat was under way in the country at that time. O'Reilly noted that the defense ministry claimed it had succeeded in "scattering the rebel forces, leaving government troops in control of most of the country." He reported that a military helicopter had taken him and his crew on a tour of areas formerly held by the rebels. (This fact was not included in the account in The No Spin Zone.) From the air, O'Reilly and his team saw houses destroyed and dead animals "but no signs of insurgent forces."
As part of the same 90-second story, O'Reilly reported from Meanguera, saying rebels had been driven out of the hamlet by the Salvadoran military after intense fighting. But this was not a wiped-out village of the dead. His own footage, which was recently posted by The Nation, showed residents walking about and only one or two burned-down structures. O'Reilly's CBS report gave no indication that he had experienced any combat on this assignment in El Salvador.
When O'Reilly was excoriating Brian Williams last week for telling a war-related whopper, he said of his Fox television show, "We've made some mistakes in the past but very few…We take great pains to present you with information that can be verified." And he asserted, "Reporting comes with a big responsibility, the Founding Fathers made that point very clearly. They said to us, 'We'll give you freedom. We'll protect you from government intrusion. But, in return, you, the press, must be honest.'"
I'm not sure that Mother Jones and David Corn quite have Bill O'Reilly where they want him. Unlike Williams O'Reilly has a bit of a wiggle room, as O'Reilly's statements were a lot more vague than Williams. Couple that with the fact that it's FOX and those guys just don't give a gak, and I'd be very surprised if O'Reilly misses any work over this.
daedalus wrote: Good thing he's an entertainer and not a journalist.
How in the hell does that work? Is O'Reilly performing an elaborate juggling routine while he gives his political opinion? Or do you mean that we've reached a stage where people will just straight up admit that they don't care if someone is telling lies, as long as those lies suit their political bias?
How in the hell does that work? Is O'Reilly performing an elaborate juggling routine while he gives his political opinion? Or do you mean that we've reached a stage where people will just straight up admit that they don't care if someone is telling lies, as long as those lies suit their political bias?
Uh, my friends and I try to find the most flying rodent gak insane stuff he says in youtube clips and drink every time he says something that makes us want to throw up a little.
You're... you're saying that people take that stuff as a political opinion?
daedalus wrote: Uh, my friends and I try to find the most flying rodent gak insane stuff he says in youtube clips and drink every time he says something that makes us want to throw up a little.
You're... you're saying that people take that stuff as a political opinion?
Ironic viewers probably make up quite a bit of FOX's ratings, but the majority love that stuff.
Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem
The Fox News host has said he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached.
—By David Corn and Daniel Schulman | Thu Feb. 19, 2015 5:26 PM EST
After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don't withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in.
O'Reilly has 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."
Fox News and O'Reilly did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Here are instances when O'Reilly touted his time as a war correspondent during the Falklands conflict:
In his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America, O'Reilly stated, "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."
Conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, in a 2003 book, described how O'Reilly answered a question during a Washington panel discussion about media coverage of the Afghanistan war: "Rather than simply answer the question, O'Reilly began by trying to establish his own bona fides as a war correspondent. 'I've covered wars, okay? I've been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I've almost been killed three times, okay.'"
In a 2004 column about US soldiers fighting in Iraq, O'Reilly noted, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."
In 2008, he took a shot at journalist Bill Moyers, saying, "I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn't see him."
In April 2013, while discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, O'Reilly shared a heroic tale of his exploits in the Falklands war:
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. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I'm looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important.
Yet his own account of his time in Argentina in his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone, contains no references to O'Reilly experiencing or covering any combat during the Falklands war. In the book, which in part chronicles his troubled stint as a CBS News reporter, O'Reilly reports that he arrived in Buenos Aires soon before the Argentine junta surrendered to the British, ending the 10-week war over control of two territories far off the coast of Argentina. There is nothing in this memoir indicating that O'Reilly witnessed the fighting between British and Argentine military forces—or that he got anywhere close to the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off Argentina's shore and about 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires.
"Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands," says Bob Schieffer. "For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals."
Given the remote location of the war zone—which included the British territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, more than 1,400 miles offshore—few reporters were able to witness and report on the combat that claimed the lives of about 900 Argentine and British troops. The government in London only allowed about 30 British journalists to accompany its military forces. As Caroline Wyatt, the BBC's defense correspondent, recently noted, "It was a war in which a small group of correspondents and crews sailing with the Royal Navy were almost entirely dependent upon the military—not only for access to the conflict, but also for the means of reporting it back to the UK." And Robert Fox, one of the embedded British reporters, recalled, "We were, in all, a party of about 32-34 accredited journalists, photographers, television crew members. We were all white, male, and British. There was no embedded reporter from Europe, the Commonwealth or the US (though they tried hard enough), let alone from Latin America."
American reporters were not on the ground in this distant war zone. "Nobody got to the war zone during the Falklands war," Susan Zirinsky, a longtime CBS News producer who helped manage the network's coverage of the war from Buenos Aires, tells Mother Jones. She does not remember what O'Reilly did during his time in Argentina. But she notes that the military junta kept US reporters from reaching the islands: "You weren't allowed on by the Argentinians. No CBS person got there."
That's how Bob Schieffer, who was CBS News' lead correspondent covering the Falklands war, recalls it: "Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands. I came close. We'd been trying to get somebody down there. It was impossible." He notes that NBC News reporter Robin Lloyd was the only American network correspondent to reach the islands. "I remember because I got my butt scooped on that," Schieffer says. "He got out there and we were all trying to get there." (Lloyd tells Mother Jones that he managed to convince the Argentine military to let him visit Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, but he spent only a day there—and this was weeks before the British forces arrived and the fighting began.)
Schieffer adds, "For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals."
O'Reilly did see some action in Argentina—just not war action. He writes in The No Spin Zone that shortly after he hit Buenos Aires—where CBS News had set up a large bureau in the Sheraton hotel—thousands of Argentines took to the streets, angry at the military junta for having yielded to the Brits.
As he tells it in his book, O'Reilly, then 32 years old, raced to cover the event: "A major riot ensued and many were killed. I was right in the middle of it and nearly died of a heart attack when a soldier, standing about ten feet away, pointed his automatic weapon directly at my head." A television cameraman was trampled, journalists were banged up, and O'Reilly and others were teargassed. "After a couple of hours of this pandemonium," he recalls, "I managed to make it back to the Sheraton with the best news footage I have ever seen. This was major violence up close and personal, and it was an important international story."
The rest of the book's section on this episode is a resentful recounting of how O'Reilly was "big-footed" when CBS used his best-ever footage in a news report that featured Schieffer, not him. "I got the hell out of Argentina fast, landed in Miami, and raised a major ruckus at the CBS offices there," O'Reilly writes. Soon he "parted company" with CBS and took an anchor/reporter job in Boston. Schieffer notes that he and other CBS reporters also covered the protest, and that per common practice, all the footage gathered that day was pooled together for the report filed by the Buenos Aires bureau.
The protest O'Reilly covered in Buenos Aires was not combat. It occurred more than a thousand miles from the war zone—after the fighting was over.
O'Reilly's account of the protest in Buenos Aires is at odds with news reports from the time—including the report from his own bureau. The CBS Evening News that night aired about a minute of video of the protest, apparently including some of the footage that O'Reilly and his camera team had obtained. It showed angry Argentines yelling and denouncing the junta that had lost the war. The only act of violence in the spot was a man throwing a punch against the car of a Canadian news crew. On the segment, Schieffer reported, "There were arrests throughout the day. The police threatened to use tear gas at one point. Several North American television crews were jostled…An ABC camera team's car was stoned before the crew escaped." The CBS report said nothing about people being killed. It does not match O'Reilly's dramatic characterization of the event in his book; the video on the broadcast did not depict "major violence up close and personal."
Dispatches on the protest filed by reporters from the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and UPI note that thousands did take to the street, setting fires, breaking store windows, and that riot police did battle with protesters who threw rocks and sticks. They say tear gas was deployed; police clubbed people with nightsticks and fired rubber bullets; reporters were assaulted by demonstrators and by police; and a photojournalist was wounded in the legs by gunfire. But these media accounts did not report, as O'Reilly claims, that there were fatalities. The New York Times noted, "Several demonstrators were reported to have been injured, along with at least two reporters."
During a 2009 interview with a television station in the Hamptons, O'Reilly talked about reporting on the Buenos Aires protest, which he claimed other CBS journalists were too fearful to cover: "I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS news correspondents were hiding in the hotel." ("We were all out with our camera crews that day to cover the protest," Schieffer says. "I'd been out there with a crew too.")
O'Reilly noted that soldiers "were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the streets" with "real bullets." And he told of rescuing his South American cameraman, who had been trampled by the crowd: "The camera went flying. I saved the tape because it was unbelievable tape. But I dragged him off the street because he was bleeding from the ear and had hit his head on the concrete…The sound man is trying to save the camera…And then the army comes running down and the guy points the M-16. And I'm going, 'Periodista, no dispare,' which means, 'Journalist, don't shoot.' And I said, 'Por favor.' Please don't shoot…Then the guy lowered his gun and went away."
The protest in Buenos Aires was not combat. Nor was it part of the Falklands war. It happened more than a thousand miles from the war—after the fighting was over. Yet O'Reilly has referred to his work in Argentina—and his rescue of his cameraman—as occurring in a "war zone." And he once told a viewer who caught his show in Argentina, "Tell everybody down there I covered the Falklands war. They'll remember."
O'Reilly has frequently represented himself as a combat-hardened journalist—he has visited US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and reported from those countries—and he has referred to his assignment in Argentina to bolster this impression. On his television show in 1999, O'Reilly responded to a letter from a retired Air Force colonel, who said he had flown 123 missions over Vietnam and who criticized O'Reilly for supporting military action in Kosovo, by citing his Falklands war days: "Hey, Colonel, did you ever have a hostile point an M-16 at your head from 10 yards away? That happened to me while I was covering the Falklands war." In his 2013 book Keep It Pithy, he writes, "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America." During his radio show on January 13, 2005, he declared, "I've been in combat. I've seen it. I've been close to it." When a caller questioned him about this, O’Reilly shot back: "I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America." O'Reilly did not specify where these firefights occurred—in The No Spin Zone, the only South America assignment he writes about is his trip to Argentina—and then he hung up on the caller.
In The No Spin Zone, O'Reilly does write vividly about an assignment that took him to El Salvador during the country's civil war shortly after CBS News hired him as a correspondent in 1981. As O'Reilly recalls in the book, he and his crew drove for a full day to reach Morazán province, "a dangerous place," and headed to a small village called Meanguera, where, a Salvadoran captain claimed, guerrillas had wiped out the town. "Nobody in his right mind would go into the guerilla-controlled area," O'Reilly writes. But he did, and he notes he found a horrific scene: "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." He does not mention being in any firefight.
O'Reilly's account of his El Salvador mission is inconsistent with the report he filed for CBS News, which aired on May 20, 1982—shortly before he was dispatched to Buenos Aires. "These days Salvadoran soldiers appear to be doing more singing than fighting," O'Reilly said in the opening narration, pointing out that not much combat was under way in the country at that time. O'Reilly noted that the defense ministry claimed it had succeeded in "scattering the rebel forces, leaving government troops in control of most of the country." He reported that a military helicopter had taken him and his crew on a tour of areas formerly held by the rebels. (This fact was not included in the account in The No Spin Zone.) From the air, O'Reilly and his team saw houses destroyed and dead animals "but no signs of insurgent forces."
As part of the same 90-second story, O'Reilly reported from Meanguera, saying rebels had been driven out of the hamlet by the Salvadoran military after intense fighting. But this was not a wiped-out village of the dead. His own footage, which was recently posted by The Nation, showed residents walking about and only one or two burned-down structures. O'Reilly's CBS report gave no indication that he had experienced any combat on this assignment in El Salvador.
When O'Reilly was excoriating Brian Williams last week for telling a war-related whopper, he said of his Fox television show, "We've made some mistakes in the past but very few…We take great pains to present you with information that can be verified." And he asserted, "Reporting comes with a big responsibility, the Founding Fathers made that point very clearly. They said to us, 'We'll give you freedom. We'll protect you from government intrusion. But, in return, you, the press, must be honest.'"
A protest in Buenos Ares is not a war zone. And Papa Bear O'Reilly has talking for years that he was in the Falklands, not a nasty protest in Argentina. He brings it up four or five times a year to brag about how he understands PTSD and the trials of soldiers in combat. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he brags about it in some of his books too, but salt on that one.
A protest in Buenos Ares is not a war zone. And Papa Bear O'Reilly has talking for years that he was in the Falklands, not a nasty protest in Argentina. He brings it up four or five times a year to brag about how he understands PTSD and the trials of soldiers in combat. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he brags about it in some of his books too, but salt on that one.
It's pretty close XD
Sorta, maybe, kinda close. Depends.
Bill lies (actually, I don't know if he does, considering he might actually think it to be the truth) all over the fething place, and I doubt anyone will dispute that. That being said, he's never actually said that he was in the Falklands during the war. At worst, he seems to have made a couple of stupid verbal slips (the 'in Argentina, in the Falklands' thing) and exaggerated situations (referring to Buenos Aires as a combat zone during the protests), but it doesn't look as though he every outright lied, as Williams' seems to have done.
That being said, it depends on what he meant when he said he was 'in Argentina, in the Falklands.' I'm more apt to believe that was just Bill being an idiot than Bill being a liar.
I think the statements are inherently misleading, but whether Papa Bear intended to mislead is unclear.
At the very least, the way he's used the story to promote himself is blatantly dishonest. A riot, no matter how bad, is not a war zone or a combat situation. And I was correct about his books, where he's used that story as a proof of credibility when talking about combat experiences that aren't remotely similar to what happened to him in Argentina. Maybe if he did a bit on Kent State it would apply, but it's world's away from the Iraq War (or such).
LordofHats wrote: I think the statements are inherently misleading, but whether Papa Bear intended to mislead is unclear.
At the very least, the way he's used the story to promote himself is blatantly dishonest. A riot, no matter how bad, is not a war zone or a combat situation. And I was correct about his books, where he's used that story as a proof of credibility when talking about combat experiences that aren't remotely similar to what happened to him in Argentina. Maybe if he did a bit on Kent State it would apply, but it's world's away from the Iraq War (or such).
Oh, I agree that his statements are most definitely misleading. I also agree that that using his experience in Buenos Aires to boost his own credibility when discussing the experience of soldiers is, at the very least, inappropriate. That being said, I still don't believe that he lied about his experience in Argentina, and I don't think he lied about being in a combat zone. I say this because, in order for it to have been a lie, he would have needed to know what was talking about, which I'm not entirely sure did. Or does, for that matter. Stupid? Yes. Liar? Mmmm.... maybe, but not because of this.
What makes him screw-up different from Williams'? Williams is smart enough to knew for damn sure his chopper didn't get hit with an RPG, but stupid enough to tell an obvious lie. Bill, on the other hand, is stupid enough to actually think he was in a combat zone, but is just smart enough to know to be vague enough to not screw himself.
Corn's argument has been corroborated by direct sources.
Regardless: Bill O'Reilly, on Fox News, implicitly claimed journalistic superiority over Mother Jones. Even if we give that claim credence, that's like being the world's tallest hobbit; probably not an argument you want to lead with.
Well, I say that, but he's really just playing to an audience. That's why he'll probably try to claim Engberg's refusal to appear on his show as a victory.
CBS staffers dispute Bill O'Reilly's 'war zone' story By Brian Stelter @brianstelter
Bill O'Reilly's account of a 1982 riot in Argentina is being sharply contradicted by seven other journalists who were his colleagues and were also there at the time.
The people all challenge O'Reilly's depiction of Buenos Aires as a "war zone" and a "combat situation." They also doubt his description of a CBS cameraman being injured in the chaos.
"Nobody remembers this happening," said Manny Alvarez, who was a cameraman for CBS News in Buenos Aires.
Jim Forrest, who was a sound engineer for CBS there, said that when he heard O'Reilly retell the Argentina riot story to interviewer Marvin Kalb several years ago, he contacted Kalb and said "I was on that crew, and I don't recall his version of events."
The contradictions come several days after Mother Jones, a left-leaning magazine, first reported about the discrepancies in O'Reilly's claims about his coverage of the Falklands War. O'Reilly was a young correspondent for CBS News at the time, assigned to cover the war from Buenos Aires, which was more than 1,000 miles from the offshore conflict zone.
In the years since, O'Reilly -- now the biggest star on Fox News -- has repeatedly referred to his experience in the "war zone."
In his 2001 book, "The No Spin Zone," O'Reilly wrote, "I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."
On his show "The O'Reilly Factor" in 2013, O'Reilly told a guest, "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. I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I'm looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important."
Mother Jones challenged some of these claims. O'Reilly responded by accusing the magazine of trying to smear him to hurt Fox News, and said the report's co-author, David Corn, is a liar and an "irresponsible guttersnipe."
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.
In a Friday interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, O'Reilly said the photographer's last name was Moreno. Roberto Moreno was there for CBS. He now lives in Venezuela, and he declined to comment to CNN.
But Mia Fabius, who was the office manager for the CBS Miami bureau at the time, has stayed in touch with Moreno for decades, and she said Moreno has never spoken about any injury in Argentina.
Further, Fabius said no injury report was ever filed.
Engberg, Alvarez and Forrest spoke on the record about their recollections of the Argentina coverage. Four other people who were there for CBS spoke on condition of anonymity, some because they still work in the television industry and others because they don't want to be publicly criticized by O'Reilly.
All of the people said they're unaware of any civilians being killed in the riot. In O'Reilly's 2001 book, he said "many were killed."
"There were certainly no dead people," Forrest said. "Had there been dead people, they would have sent more camera crews."
Alvarez called the claims of deaths "outrageous, outrageous."
"People being mowed down? Where was that? That would have been great footage. That would have turned into the story," he said.
CNN's report from Buenos Aires at the time described "a squad of tear-gas-armed troops" and a crowd "hurling coins, rocks, and even bricks at both police and journalists," but no deaths.
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.
Speaking on CNN, Engberg called that "the most absurd thing I've ever heard" and said "I never ordered room service during a riot." Engberg also said he, as well as an entire team from CBS, was out in Buenos Aires and in a position to see the protest.
O'Reilly also cited a New York Times account of the riot that said "one policeman pulled a pistol, firing five shots over the heads of fleeing demonstrators." This supports the depiction of a dangerous protest, though does not confirm O'Reilly's claim that people were killed that night.
The more I read on this, the more it seems that O’Reilly doesn’t have the wiggle room I first thought he did. His descriptions are just way too far from what really happened.
But I still stand by more comment that FOX doesn’t give a gak, and won’t penalise O’Reilly in any way.
It just smacks that "one side" lost and is now out for "the other side's" blood.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim Williams is on the opposite side to O’Reilly. Nor do I think there’s much of a feeling that Williams suspension has provoked any kind of a feeling among the left that they ‘got one of ours’. The guy is a news anchor.
Rather, I think this is more a case of opportune timing – people made a big deal out of Williams’ comment, and some guys had likely been sitting on some material they had on O’Reilly that they thought was the same, so out it comes.
I just don't trust anything from MotherJones... they're just as bad as Breibart or InfoWars.
I find MotherJones potentially useful. There’s clearly a bias so you know they’re only going to be putting up the stuff that matches their pov, but I’ve never read anything that straight up bs. Even if you disagree with the message of the piece, and I often do, then spending the time to read through it and think about where you differ is a useful experience that can clarify your thinking on the issue.
Upon watching the Bill O’Reilly controversy (or lack thereof) unfold over the past few days, it’s hard not to keep going back to the same theme:
Motive.
As in: Is the Mother Jones story (or non-story) one in search of simple truth or is it a hit piece politically or personally motivated by writer David Corn? The “liberal Mother Jones versus conservative Fox News” theme could suffice as motive on the surface, but this onion seems to have a few more layers to it, and it stinks.
As few are noting, Mr. Corn worked for Fox News as a contributor from 2001-2008. His career would end abruptly there, as the network decided not to renew his contract (which is a nice way of firing someone). Corn would go on to make an impact in the 2012 presidential election after receiving that infamous tape of Mitt Romney‘s “47 percent” comments. It’s still hilarious to see all the acclaim Corn got for basically signing for a FedEx package and uploading a tape to the Mother Jones website. He even won a Polk Award for the effort, even though it was Jimmy Carter‘s grandson who introduced the guy who actually recorded Romney (Scott Prouty) with Corn. Talk about a silver platter, but that never stops Corn from still mentioning it as if he’s trying to beat some kind of quota when appearing on MSNBC, where he serves as a contributor.
So when we look at why Corn would refute O’Reilly’s account of his time working for CBS in Argentina as a reporter covering the Falklands War in 1982, keep all of that in mind in terms of personal and political motivation. As for finding fault in O’Reilly’s account, this appears to be a case of semantics. Note: O’Reilly never said he was on the Falkland Islands, as the Corn piece claims — he’s been consistent in stating he was always in Argentina (Buenos Aires) at the time.
Skeptics — largely from left-leaning blogs — charge that Argentina wasn’t part of the war zone, therefore making O’Reilly a liar for stating he was. But protests there following the war did turn violent. In an internal CBS memo to then-Buenos Aires bureau chief Larry Doyle, the network characterized those protests as riots:
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.
At the time, as reported in the New York Times, Argentine soldiers fired into crowds. Protesters stormed the presidential palace. A CBS photographer got caught in the chaos and O’Reilly — citing blood coming from his ear and being injured — “dragged him out of there.” Add it all up, O’Reilly was covering the Falklands War from Argentina (as almost all reporters were), and while the riot that occurred after Argentina surrendered wasn’t technically in the war zone, it certainly had the elements of one during that particular riot. Again, semantics.
And for Corn to write that O’Reilly claimed to be on the Falklands is patently dishonest, which may explain why major media –outside of Fox’s rival CNN and its media critic Brian Stelter — has largely dismissed this story as the nothing-burger it is.
Late yesterday, O’Reilly’s former CBS colleague Eric Engberg made the claim that O’Reilly might as well been at a spring break destination by saying, “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone.’”
Of course, very few are exploring motive here when it comes to Engberg either. For those keeping score at home, this is a very easy dot to connect as to why Engberg — who called O’Reilly a “bloviator” in his opening sentence of his “revelation” — suddenly felt compelled to come forward.
As many of you know, Bernie Goldberg is a Fox News Contributor — primarily dissecting stories focusing on media on The O’Reilly Factor and Kelly File. Goldberg also worked for CBS News as an award-winning reporter for 28 years, where he complained about internal liberal bias to upper management within the organization with no success.
Here’s what happened after Goldberg decided to share his perspective with the general public per a 2002 book review of Goldberg’s best-selling Bias by the Houston Objectivism Society’s Warren Ross:
I
n 1996, he (Goldberg) “went public,” publishing an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal accusing CBS of bias and fully critiquing an Eric Engberg story supposedly providing a “reality check” on Steve Forbes’ flat tax proposal. Despite the story’s billing as “news,” Goldberg noted that it used all the following techniques of distortion: loaded words (“scheme” and “elixir”), omission of anyone supporting Forbes’ idea (though a number of prominent economists were available), omission of affiliation of “experts” opposing the idea, and snide characterization (Engberg called it a “wacky” proposal that should be tried first in Albania). Goldberg used this egregious example as a starting point to support a broader charge of left-wing bias at the networks, and to explain why the big three TV networks were losing viewers.
Engberg has complained for years about Goldberg singling him out. So what better way to get back at Goldberg and smear O’Reilly and Fox News in the process by disputing O’Reilly’s claim about a riot that absolutely did happen and was even a lead story at the time on the CBS Evening News? Again, motives are worth bring into question. Engberg was invited on O’Reilly’s show on Monday to debate the topic, but he predictably refused (he did have time to appear on Reliable Sources for 30 minutes on Sunday morning). After all, would be hard to win such a debate with things like internal CBS memos and video supporting the host of the program.
Here’s the net-net of the Corn column: Come Tuesday, this story will be dead. Unlike Brian Williams — whom O’Reilly was actually more compassionate to than most during his downfall — the Factor host will not be suspended, reprimanded or even scratched by this non-troversy.
Welcome to the Hunger Games that the media has become in 2015: A polarized game of survival where media members are taking sides against each other.
And the general public yawns at the ridiculousness of it all.
I like that phrasiology... post Brian Williams, it's turned into "The Hunger Games" of the media circus.
A reporter saying "protests got intense" is not exactly the same as backing up a statement that he was in a war zone.
But it's obvious that this is personal. And it is telling that the "left" on this site swiftly criticized Williams while the "right" is trying to make it clear that this lie is totally different.
Let's just read O'Reilly's statement - “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."
No-one on this Earth would hear that and think 'O'Reilly was in the Beunos Aires in riots that followed the Falklands. People hearing that will think he was in actually in the Falklands during the fighting, because that's what O'Reilly wanted people to think. It really couldn't be clearer that he meant to mislead the listener to thinking he was in an actual combat zone.
Again... not the samething as William's Memorygate fiasco.
It is different and O'Reilly won't cop anything. Most of the difference is because it's FOX News and they just don't give a gak.
I also wonder if it's different because O'Reilly was bullshitting about a war that didn't involve US troops. Part of the outrage, I think, about the Williams thing is that he claimed heroism from US troops, and that's about as big a no no as you can do in America. But this was putting himself in to a fight between to foreign nations, so I think the immediate emotional outrage isn't there.
Point being... this isn't the same as William's fabulist's take of his own experience.
At a minimum... many of BO’s debatable recollections of these events (that occurred 33years ago mind you) are only just that: It's Debatable. There's too many industry folks saying it's one thing vs. the other.
*shrug*
I got hung up on the whole "warzone" thing... as, evidently, I was living in one recently (rather 10 mins away).
Well, if you got nothing else, pull out some whataboutism. Even though random public figures claiming something looked like a war zone is absolutely in no way akin to someone intentionally misleading people into believing they were in a war zone they weren't in.
By that logic we need to call out the various authors and inkers of the comic book Punisher: War Zone for not admitting that their work was in fact a comic book, and not an actual war zone.
I mean what even
The only analogy here would be if the police chief of ferguson claimed that he served in a war zone, and that he meant ferguson. I mean, you must see that, right? As you say, you're not a republican and you don't even watch fox news so surely, as an objective guy, you must have no real interest into going into these weird logical contortions to defend guys you don't even support?
Anyway, what Hillary Clinton and some police chief said about random areas isn't exactly on-topic to ethics in video game journalism ethics in actual, I guess, journalism.
By that logic we need to call out the various authors and inkers of the comic book Punisher: War Zone for not admitting that their work was in fact a comic book, and not an actual war zone.
Those bastards *shakes fist at the sky*
Also a difference between someone saying something looks like something (simile) and saying it is something it's not (lie). O'Reily never once said it "looked like a warzone" or even drew a comparison. He just called it a combat situation straight faced and is being called on it because a lie is clearly distinguishable from a figure of speech.
1) Liberals do something bad, everybody look! (this time it's the liberal media)
2) Conservative get caught doing the same.
3) I'm not on Team Right, but it's completely different.
4) I'm still not on Team Right, but here are bunch of links on how this is completely different. I don't really care about this though, because I'm not Team Right.
5) Guys, can't we just agree that everybody sucks and move on...
Ouze wrote: Well, if you got nothing else, pull out some whataboutism. Even though random public figures claiming something looked like a war zone is absolutely in no way akin to someone intentionally misleading people into believing they were in a war zone they weren't in.
By that logic we need to call out the various authors and inkers of the comic book Punisher: War Zone for not admitting that their work was in fact a comic book, and not an actual war zone.
I mean what even
The only analogy here would be if the police chief of ferguson claimed that he served in a war zone, and that he meant ferguson. I mean, you must see that, right? As you say, you're not a republican and you don't even watch fox news so surely, as an objective guy, you must have no real interest into going into these weird logical contortions to defend guys you don't even support?
Anyway, what Hillary Clinton and some police chief said about random areas isn't exactly on-topic to ethics in video game journalism ethics in actual, I guess, journalism.
Nah man...
It's about the one side of the spectrum (leftist/liberal/anti-FauxNews) are attempting to claim that FauxNews commentators are held to a lower standard... if you going to ding BO over that... then you must also address the ridiculous assertion that the Ferguson riots closely resembled a military engagement.
1) Liberals do something bad, everybody look! (this time it's the liberal media)
2) Conservative get caught doing the same.
3) I'm not on Team Right, but it's completely different.
4) I'm still not on Team Right, but here are bunch of links on how this is completely different. I don't really care about this though, because I'm not Team Right.
5) Guys, can't we just agree that everybody sucks and move on...
Not a reporter pretending it's a war zone, but quoting a politician asking if it is a war zone.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) tweeted "Images & reports out of #Ferguson are frightening," minutes after the first photos and videos hit Twitter of police firing tear gas at those gathered.
"Is this a war zone or a US city? Gov't escalates tensions w/military equipment & tactics," Amash added.
Again, a report quoting what a politician said, not a reporter pretending he is in a war zone:
Missouri Democratic Governor Jay Nixon pulled the Ferguson police department from leading the response to violent protests rocking the small town, which he noted now looks “a little bit like a war zone.”
Again, an article claiming saying that it looks like a war zone, and even pointing out that it isn't:
Writing for Business Insider, former Marine Paul Szoldra catalogued the military weaponry on display in Ferguson, then observed that “this is not a war zone […]. This is a city outside of St. Louis where people on both sides are angry.”
Again, not a reporter claiming that he is covering a war zone, but a reporter quoting the statements of a local citizen:
Barks, owner of the car repair shop, said looters smashed his windows and tried to start a fire inside. They were eventually chased away by some of his friends, not the police.
“It was like a war zone,” he said. “The poor cops that I met down the road when I came in around 4 a.m., they were pale-faced, just scared to death. They just got overrun.”
Again, not a reporter claiming that he is in a war zone, but a reporter quoting a local citizen:
Fires were raging when a man with a scarf wrapped around his face walked out of the smoke and looked around him in disbelief. “All they had to do was give us justice and look at this,” he said. “This a war zone now.”
9 Powerful Photos That Show Ferguson Is Pretty Much Being Treated Like A War Zone
I know you are smart enough to realize that there is a pretty significant difference between someone claiming that they are actively reporting in an active war, with bullets flying over their head and while dragging their camera man to safety, and someone saying "this looks crazy, like a war zone".
"I've reported in an active war zone during a war" =/= I reported from a protest after a war that went out of control =/= I reported in Ferguson, it looked like a war zone"
whembly wrote: It's about the one side of the spectrum (leftist/liberal/anti-FauxNews) are attempting to claim that FauxNews commentators are held to a lower standard... if you going to ding BO over that... then you must also
Must we, though? Must we? See, I don't know who made the assertion you're pushing. I did mention, or at least agree with, the idea that Bill O'Reilly isn't going to see any repercussions because FNC simply doesn't care, but I don't hold them to a lower standard. I think they both should be fired, while also noting that FNC will absolutely not meet that evenly applied standard. I think that journalists have special privileges - they get access that the general public doesn't have, they have a platform and respect - snicker - stick with me here - that joe schmoe doesn't have, and they have legal protections that are far above what a nonjournalist has in their profession. With those rights come some responsibilities, I think, and while most major news outlets at least make some effort to be ethical, I think at the very barest a journalist who makes up lies to make themselves look good should no longer be a journalist.
I also disagree with the idea that arguing that two journalists who did reasonably similar things can't be criticized and held to the same level of accountability because first some totally unrelated analogy that that honestly I feel stupid even trying to rebut so I'm going to stop typing now. At this point the difference between the Williams / O'Reilly incidents and what you're bringing up has veered dangerously into pigeon chess, frankly.
And I know you're smart enough to realize that the Falklands war, was exactly that, a war. And that most of the reporters "worked" in Buenos Aires during this event. Furthermore, war zones do not cease being war zones the second one side capitulates. The so called rioting that ensued in the aftermath of Argentina’s surrender is a clear example of that reality.
Heck, it doesn't even compare to Ferguson, in that Ferguson was blown way out of proportion.
So, if you want to ding BO for equating riots to a warzone... sure, go ahead.
But, forgive me when I roll my eyes if you believe this is a "Brian Williams" moment.
To me, Corn is going after his pound of retributive flesh.
And really guys... I don't watch BO, what really got under my skin about this event is:
a) Corn was the guy that published that Romney "47%" comment that was secretly videotaped from a private venue. So as a Romney voter, feth that guy. b) The whole warzone criticism is ridiculous... (me being 10 minutes away from Ferguson)
c) I ate corn for dinner... and you know how that comes out.
whembly wrote: It's about the one side of the spectrum (leftist/liberal/anti-FauxNews) are attempting to claim that FauxNews commentators are held to a lower standard... if you going to ding BO over that... then you must also
Must we, though? Must we? See, I don't know who made the assertion you're pushing. I did mention, or at least agree with, the idea that Bill O'Reilly isn't going to see any repercussions because FNC simply doesn't care, but I don't hold them to a lower standard. I think they both should be fired, while also noting that FNC will absolutely not meet that evenly applied standard. I think that journalists have special privileges - they get access that the general public doesn't have, they have a platform and respect - snicker - stick with me here - that joe schmoe doesn't have, and they have legal protections that are far above what a nonjournalist has in their profession. With those rights come some responsibilities, I think, and while most major news outlets at least make some effort to be ethical, I think at the very barest a journalist who makes up lies to make themselves look good should no longer be a journalist.
I also disagree with the idea that arguing that two journalists who did reasonably similar things can't be criticized and held to the same level of accountability because first some totally unrelated analogy that that honestly I feel stupid even trying to rebut so I'm going to stop typing now. At this point the difference between the Williams / O'Reilly incidents and what you're bringing up has veered dangerously into pigeon chess, frankly.
whembly wrote: And I know you're smart enough to realize that the Falklands war, was exactly that, a war. And that most of the reporters "worked" in Buenos Aires during this event. Furthermore, war zones do not cease being war zones the second one side capitulates. The so called rioting that ensued in the aftermath of Argentina’s surrender is a clear example of that reality.
The Falkland Wars were in fact a war. And most of the reporters did in fact work out of Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires never ceased being a war zone, it never was a war zone. Unless there was some significant military action by the British against Buenos Aires that everybody forgot to report, BO and all the other reporters were safely tucked away from any actual "war zone".
So, if you want to ding BO for equating riots to a warzone... sure, go ahead.
Nobody is dinging BO for equating riots to a warzone. People are dinging BO for pretenting that he was covering an active war in an active war zone when he was in fact reporting a riot many miles away from a war zone.
But, forgive me when I roll my eyes if you believe this is a "Brian Williams" moment.
They are both reporters lying about being present in an active war zone.
Everybody that is leaning "left" on this website quickly commented that Williams is an idiot and that he should pay a price. But people leaning "right" are going out of their way to defend "their guy" even though they don't even care about "their guy".
whembly wrote: Heh... so, following this logic to call out O'Reilly....
We going to call out these folks over Ferguson?
Consider these two statements;
“I was in Ferguson, which looked like a warzone.”
“I was in a warzone.”
The first establishes that someone was in a riot, and then uses a simile to point out that that riot was extremely violent and chaotic. The latter is telling someone they were in an actual warzone.
This really can’t be more obvious. They teach simile and metaphor in primary school, it’s basic stuff. Trying to act as if someone using warzone in a simile is the same as saying they were actually in a warzone choosing to believe what is politically convenient for you, as opposed to what you know is actually true.
Adding to this, Bill O'Reilly has been called out on his claim that he personally heard the gunshot fired by George de Mohrenschildt in his commission of suicide.
For those who don't know, Mohrenschildt was a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, and was under investigation following the Kennedy assassination. Bill O'Reilly claims that he was standing outside Mohrenschildt's door in Florida when the man killed himself... others who knew Bill O'Reilly at the time, and others who were involved with the press at the time, have stated that O'Reilly was in Dallas at the time of the shooting (not Florida) and stole the story (and made himself a central figure in it) from a Dallas newspaper.
WASHINGTON (WJZ) — Major misstatement of the facts. This time, it comes from a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet. CBS News captured the Secretary of Veterans Affairs bragging about being in the special forces—but it’s a false claim he now admits to.
Mary Bubala has more.
The exchange happened in January as a CBS News crew followed Secretary Robert McDonald. He was touring the streets of Los Angeles counting homeless veterans as part of a VA program to help them find housing.
The veteran said he was part of special forces and McDonald said he was, too, and asked the veteran which years.
But McDonald was not in the special forces. Instead, he served mostly with the 82nd Airborne division as a paratrooper. His discrepancy was first reported by Huffington Post and late Monday afternoon, he spoke out about his exaggeration.
“I made a mistake. I apologize for that. I have no excuse for it,” McDonald said. “It was a misstatement. It was a mistake.”
McDonald is a West Point graduate handpicked by President Obama to clean up a Veterans Affairs department plagued by scandal. Obama says he’s taking McDonald at his word that this was a misstatement on the fly and not a pattern of exaggeration.
McDonald took office in July. He’s the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble.
Former colleagues of Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News host whose tales of past reporting exploits are facing renewed scrutiny, have disputed his account of surviving a bombardment of bricks and rocks while covering the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.
Six people who covered the riots with O’Reilly in California for Inside Edition told the Guardian they did not recall an incident in which, as O’Reilly has claimed, “concrete was raining down on us” and “we were attacked by protesters”.
Several members of the team suggested that O’Reilly may instead be overstating a fracas involving one disgruntled Los Angeles resident, who smashed one of their cameras with a piece of rubble.
Two of the team said the man was angered specifically by O’Reilly behaving disrespectfully after arriving at the smoking remains of his neighbourhood in a limousine, whose driver at one point began polishing the vehicle. O’Reilly is said to have shouted at the man and asked him: “Don’t you know who I am?”
O’Reilly, 65, is one of the most influential figures in American broadcasting and publishing. He is paid a reported $20m a year to host his show, the O’Reilly Factor, which consistently ranks among the most-watched current affairs programs in US cable TV. He has also authored several bestselling books and memoirs.
He has also been accused of lying in one of his books about being present at the scene when a CIA source, who had allegedly been linked to the assassination of President John F Kennedy, killed himself in 1977.
A spokeswoman for Fox News declined to respond to detailed questions about O’Reilly’s recollections of the Los Angeles riots. She said in a statement that claims casting doubt on his statements were “nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates”.
“Bill O’Reilly has already addressed several claims levelled against him,” the spokeswoman said. “Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. Fox News maintains its staunch support of O’Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.”
O’Reilly has on several occasions referred to a perilous situation he said that he endured while covering the riots in Los Angeles for Inside Edition, the syndicated news magazine show that he fronted between 1989 and 1995.
“They were throwing bricks and stones at us,” O’Reilly told an online interviewer in 2006. “Concrete was raining down on us. The cops saved our butts that time.” Earlier this week, he told the broadcaster Hugh Hewitt: “We were attacked, we were attacked by protesters, where bricks were thrown at us.”
Inside Edition colleagues from the time who were in Los Angeles with O’Reilly – reporters Bonnie Strauss, Tony Cox and Rick Kirkham, and crew members Theresa McKeown, Bob McCall and Neil Antin – told the Guardian that they did not recall such an incident.
Kirkham, the show’s lead reporter on the riots, was adamant that it did not take place. “It didn’t happen,” he said. “If it did, how come none of the rest of us remember it?”
Tonya Freeman, the head of the show’s library at the time, said: “I honestly don’t recall watching or hearing about that. I believe I probably would have remembered something like that.” Another librarian from the time also said she did not recall the incident. A spokeswoman for Inside Edition declined to comment. Several other senior Inside Edition staffers from the time declined to comment when asked if they recalled O’Reilly’s version of events.
Several members of the team, however, recalled that one afternoon in the days following the peak of the riots, which began on 29 April, the angry resident attacked a camera while O’Reilly was being filmed near the intersection of Fairfax Avenue and Pico Boulevard. “It was one person with one rock,” said McCall, the sound man. “Nobody was hit.”
“A man came out of his home,” said Antin, who was operating the camera that was struck. “He picked up a chunk of concrete, and threw it at the camera.” Told of O’Reilly’s description of a bombardment, Antin said: “I don’t think that’s really … No, I mean no, not where we were.”
“There was no concrete,” said McKeown. “There was a single brick”. Kirkham’s response was: “Oh my God. That is a completely fictitious story. Nothing ever rained down on us”. Kirkham, whose van was shown on an episode of the show being shot at during late-night rioting, later made a film for HBO about his struggle with drug addiction.
McKeown, the director of west coast operations, and Kirkham, said O’Reilly had in the moments beforehand irritated residents who were trying to put out fires and clear wreckage. A seventh member of the team, who declined to be quoted for this article, agreed with this characterisation of the incident.
“There were people putting out fires nearby,” said McKeown. “And Bill showed up in his fancy car.” McKeown said at one point, the driver of O’Reilly’s personal car risked causing further offence by exiting the vehicle with a bottle of Windex and polishing the roof.
“The guy was watching us and getting more and more angry,” said McKeown. “Bill was being Bill – complaining ‘people are in my eye line’ – and kind of being very insensitive to the situation.” Kirkham said: “It was just so out of line. He starts barking commands about ‘this isn’t good enough for me’, ‘this isn’t gonna work’, ‘who’s in charge here?’”
The man shouted abuse at O’Reilly and the team, crew members said, and O’Reilly ordered him to shut up. He asked “don’t you know who I am?’,” according to two members of the team.
“The guy lost it,” said McKeown. Enraged, he is said to have leapt on to the team’s flatbed trailer and kicked over a light, before throwing the piece of rubble, which smashed the camera and an autocue screen. Antin said he restrained the man. But O’Reilly then continued taunting him while a producer stood between them. “Come on, you wanna take me? I’ll take you on,” O’Reilly is said to have shouted at him.
McCall said the producer, who is about a foot shorter than O’Reilly, “didn’t have much trouble holding Bill back.” McCall said: “It was a lot more show than anything else on Bill’s part.”
A passing police car was flagged down. After an officer called for backup, several more officers eventually arrived. Crew members recalled that before this, O’Reilly had been hauled inside one of the team’s vehicles by a colleague. “It wasn’t a police rescue,” said Kirkham.
The crew told the police they did not want to press charges and the man was escorted home. Irritated police officers instructed the crew they needed to leave the area. “We had to lay all of our equipment down and just drive out of there with cables dragging,” said Antin. McKeown said that by then, an intimidating crowd had gathered. Other members of the team said the man remained alone.
Antin said an ashen-faced and “visibly shaken” O’Reilly rushed down a nearby alleyway with a secondary cameraman to film replacement shots, which were to be broadcast later as if live.
Asked if O’Reilly’s behaviour was to blame for the incident, McKeown said: “I mean, it would have pissed me off. There didn’t seem to be a sensitivity for what these people were going through. It was more ‘I’m here to do my show’.” Kirkham said O’Reilly had provoked the man, who was “pissed off with O’Reilly’s attitude”.
Antin, however, rejected suggestions that O’Reilly was responsible. “Not at all,” he said. McCall said he did not know. “I can’t say if that’s true or not,” he said. “But I don’t have much respect for Bill, having worked for him during that time. He was a real jackass.”
Asked to respond to the claims from O’Reilly’s former colleagues, and to explain whether O’Reilly had been describing a separate incident when he said “concrete was raining down on us”, the Fox News spokeswoman resent her original emailed statement.
Ouze wrote: As McDonald actually went to Ranger school at least I could sort of believe it was a misstatement, as opposed to a bald faced lie.
On the other hand, he had a whopper just a few weeks beforehand, so....
Special Forces is also based at Fort Bragg along with the 82nd AB.
Lying about being Special Forces seems to be as American as apple pie if my past experiences are anything to go by, unless they do in fact make up more than 25% of the veteran population that comes to my hospital .
But if anybody should expect to get called out on a fib/exaggeration/lie it should be the guy sitting at the big desk with the POTUS during cabinet meetings.
d-usa wrote: Everybody that is leaning "left" on this website quickly commented that Williams is an idiot and that he should pay a price. But people leaning "right" are going out of their way to defend "their guy" even though they don't even care about "their guy".
Really, it's just whembly trying to defend O'Reily.
Also, you may be 'misremembering' the details of this thread. Sirlynchymob decided any conversation about journalism should be about Fox's (justifiably) terrible reputation, saying we couldn't punish everyone who lies.
Most people didn't talk about consequences at all.
I don't know if you consider yourself centrist or left leaning but we don't know what you think of the Brian Williams case, because you felt it was a good time to talk about Bush. (correct me if I'm wrong. In which case I apologize for getting rankled)
Well, looks like someone is finally getting into trouble for lying about Iraq.
*ducks*
Bush didn't lie. The worst you could charge him with is being a person who was eager to have an excuse to invade Iraq.
One evening in March more than 30 years ago, Gaeton Fonzi received a call from a man whose voice and name are now instantly recognizable.
"Hi Gaeton," the caller said. "Bill O'Reilly."
The year was 1977. O'Reilly, a young television reporter in Dallas, was chasing a story about a figure in the investigation of the JFK assassination who had killed himself in Florida.
He was calling Fonzi, a congressional investigator, to confirm the suicide.
"You hear anything about it?" O'Reilly asked, according to phone recordings provided to CNN by Gaeton's widow, Marie Fonzi.
The phone recordings indicate that O'Reilly learned of the suicide second-hand and was in a different location at the time.
Years later, however, O'Reilly would repeatedly claim to have been at the scene.
In his 2012 book "Killing Kennedy," O'Reilly wrote that he knocked on the door of a South Florida home when suddenly he "heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide" of George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian immigrant who knew Lee Harvey Oswald.
While promoting the book, O'Reilly said on Fox News that he "was about to knock on the door" when de Mohrenschildt "blew his brains out with a shotgun."
The discrepancies were first reported by JFK researcher Jefferson Morley in 2013. His fact-checking didn't get much attention at the time, and the low-quality recordings he posted on his website made it difficult to understand what O'Reilly and Fonzi were saying.
Earlier this week, amid scrutiny about how O'Reilly has recounted some of his journalistic exploits, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America drew new attention to Morley's fact-checking.
CNN then obtained higher-quality recordings from Fonzi's widow.
In the conversations with Fonzi that night in 1977, O'Reilly never once indicated he was anywhere near the scene of the suicide -- much less that he heard the fatal gunshot.
On the call, O'Reilly initially tried to confirm the suicide.
"What's the story?" O'Reilly asked.
"They don't know," Fonzi said.
"Nobody knows," O'Reilly replied.
O'Reilly can also be heard detailing his travel plans. Although he never said where he was calling from, O'Reilly made it clear where he was not.
"I'm coming down there tomorrow," he said. "I'm coming to Florida."
Moments later, he elaborated on his itinerary.
"Now, okay, I'm gonna try to get a night flight out of here, if I can," O'Reilly told Fonzi. "But I might have to go tomorrow morning. Let me see."
Fox News declined to comment on the contradiction in O'Reilly's accounts. The channel referred questions to a spokesperson for Henry Holt, the publisher of O'Reilly's book.
Earlier this week the publisher said "we fully stand behind Bill O'Reilly."
"This one passage is immaterial to the story being told by this terrific book and we have no plans to look into this matter," Henry Holt added.
O'Reilly and Fonzi were apparently on friendly terms. According to Marie Fonzi, her husband hired O'Reilly in the early 1970s to write for Miami Magazine, though she said her husband had no contact with O'Reilly in the years leading up to his death in 2012.
In his 1993 memoir, "The Last Investigation," Gaeton Fonzi recalled those phone conversations on the night of the suicide and described O'Reilly as a "friend." Fonzi's name does not appear in the index of "Killing Kennedy."
Because of that personal connection, Marie Fonzi said she felt conflicted before making the recordings public.
"I always try to do what I think my husband would do, and I sometimes think he would tell me, 'Don't hurt Bill,'" she said. "But I also know my husband was committed to the truth."
Did Bill O’Reilly personally witness “Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs”? The answer, as you may have guessed, is definitely not. But in this particular case, his long-time employer Fox News is openly admitting to their top anchor’s fabrication.
Last week, the network dismissed a widening array of allegations against O’Reilly as “nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates” and argued that “responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility.”
But Fox News did respond to questions posed by Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, about a 2013 book in which O’Reilly wrote, “I’ve seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America, Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs.” In a statement to the Post, the network admits that O’Reilly did not actually see anything of the sort:
Asked about O'Reilly’s statements Friday, a Fox News spokesman said that O’Reilly was not an eyewitness to any bombings or injuries in Northern Ireland. Instead, he was shown photos of bombings by Protestant police officers.
Want to read more about O’Reilly’s dangerous adventures? The book in which he originally claimed to have witnessed the Belfast bombings, Keep It Pithy: Useful Observations in a Tough World: An Essential Collection of Writings By One of the Most Powerful Voices in Media Today, can be purchased on BillOReilly.com for $21.99.
Part of me does wonder to what extent this would be true of a lot of reporters. O'Reilly is caught in a cascade of everyone suddenly going through his professed experiences with a fine tooth comb, but I'd bet we'd find similar in the cases of many more media personalities.
Also;
Keep It Pithy: Useful Observations in a Tough World: An Essential Collection of Writings By One of the Most Powerful Voices
I can't help but feel O'Reilly was busy jerking off as he came up with that title...
Yes, everyone is going over O'Reilly's career with a fine-tooth comb, because the man has built a career out of (apparently) distorting the truth and making claims to major events that are untrue.
For someone who's supposed to be a journalist, reporting the news, this is Bad. The lies he's propagated have been used to lend him an air of credibility over other journalists... credibility it would seem he is entirely undeserving of.
Perhaps one of the worst aspects of this is that his version of the events he's reported has always placed him significantly in the limelight, rather than the events he's reporting on. In essence, instead of the news, he's been reporting on the Adventures of Bill O'Reilly.
LordofHats wrote: Part of me does wonder to what extent this would be true of a lot of reporters.
I think it's probably of most people, to be honest. Most people exaggerate their stories, if only to make them a little more entertaining. We even do this as a natural part of memory - changing stories to make them more streamlined, make the moral clearer. I posted a link about this earlier.
I journalism I think it'd be even more common. Only so many times people can ask you about how your experience in some amazing recent troublespot, before the journalist starts telling a more interesting story than 'when that amazing event broke out I missed it entirely because I because I was in basement of a government building flicking through archives, double checking a witness statement that turned out to be nothing of importance'.
Honestly, the bigger problem is probably our reliance on stories. Even when they're factual, they're inherently misleading.
LordofHats wrote: Part of me does wonder to what extent this would be true of a lot of reporters.
I think it's probably of most people, to be honest. Most people exaggerate their stories, if only to make them a little more entertaining. We even do this as a natural part of memory - changing stories to make them more streamlined, make the moral clearer. I posted a link about this earlier.
I journalism I think it'd be even more common. Only so many times people can ask you about how your experience in some amazing recent troublespot, before the journalist starts telling a more interesting story than 'when that amazing event broke out I missed it entirely because I because I was in basement of a government building flicking through archives, double checking a witness statement that turned out to be nothing of importance'.
Honestly, the bigger problem is probably our reliance on stories. Even when they're factual, they're inherently misleading.
Can you elaborate on that? It's sounds gooey good... but, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it.
whembly wrote: Can you elaborate on that? It's sounds gooey good... but, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it.
Basically, we as a species are storytellers. Have a beginning, middle and end, with some kind of little lesson wrapped up in there.
The problem is that these morals often don't work when placed in a greater context. Consider the Titanic, where every schoolkid can tell you that they built a boat that was meant to be unsinkable, and sure enough it sunk, giving us a morality tail about hubris. But if you look at ship building the Titanic really meant nothing, it was one boat that sank, one shipbuilder who was too confident in one hull design. But since the Titanic we've continued to build bigger and more sophisticated, and there's been only four ships sunk by icebergs, and not one casualty since 1959. Seen in the context of what came after, the story changes to one of a single instance of poor decision making and misfortune in the middle of a greater human story of building, better, bigger, faster and stronger.
That latter story is hard to doesn't have a neat narrative, and so it isn't told.
So my kind of vague thoughts in the wake of this whole story is that maybe there wasn't any point to either Williams or O'Reilly's stories, even if they were true. That we don't need more stories, what we need is actual, real data placed in context.
So my kind of vague thoughts in the wake of this whole story is that maybe there wasn't any point to either Williams or O'Reilly's stories, even if they were true. That we don't need more stories, what we need is actual, real data placed in context.
The point was to sell the story, with the story itself often becoming part of the marketing pitch journalists create to sell themselves and their work. I agree that contextualized data is preferable to the journalism most of the West presently deals with, but no one will watch that sort of thing and video isn't a good medium for it.
We shouldn't be "sold" news. From a news reporter, I only want to know "Who", "What", "Where" and "When". I most certainly do not want to be told the journalist's opinion on "Why". That's up to me, as the person viewing the news from an external perspective, to synthesize out of the information provided.
News should not be "exciting" in its presentation. Maybe the events reported on are interesting or exciting (that's why it's news), but I don't need someone who wasn't actually there, who didn't actually see these things, who wasn't actually involved telling me that they were. That has moved out of journalism and into entertainment.
whembly wrote: Can you elaborate on that? It's sounds gooey good... but, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it.
Basically, we as a species are storytellers. Have a beginning, middle and end, with some kind of little lesson wrapped up in there.
The problem is that these morals often don't work when placed in a greater context. Consider the Titanic, where every schoolkid can tell you that they built a boat that was meant to be unsinkable, and sure enough it sunk, giving us a morality tail about hubris. But if you look at ship building the Titanic really meant nothing, it was one boat that sank, one shipbuilder who was too confident in one hull design. But since the Titanic we've continued to build bigger and more sophisticated, and there's been only four ships sunk by icebergs, and not one casualty since 1959. Seen in the context of what came after, the story changes to one of a single instance of poor decision making and misfortune in the middle of a greater human story of building, better, bigger, faster and stronger.
That latter story is hard to doesn't have a neat narrative, and so it isn't told.
So my kind of vague thoughts in the wake of this whole story is that maybe there wasn't any point to either Williams or O'Reilly's stories, even if they were true. That we don't need more stories, what we need is actual, real data placed in context.
Awesome... I fully understand you and I'm in full agreement with you.
I, too, would prefer stone cold, hard facts. The unfortunate thing is that now, especially cable news, the news is just as often about *facts*, as it is about The Narrative™.
+1
