Fox News Bill O'Reilly Exposed as Smoke Blower

by John M. Curtis
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Copyright February 24, 2015
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             When NBC’s 55-year-old “Nightly News Anchor” Brian Williams was exposed Feb. 4 for telling tall tales about his experience covering the Iraq War in 2003, it was Fox News “No Spin Zone” 65-year-oldBill O’Reilly who rushed to his defense.  Williams was accused of fabricating a story that his helicopter got hit with a rocket-propelled-grenade [RPG] flying into Baghdad shortly after the Iraq War started March 20, 2003.  When NBC News President Deborah Turness announced Feb. 10 the networks was suspending Williams for six months without pay, it seemed like an appropriate punishment considering the breach.  Williams apologized Feb. 4 on his Nightly News calling his mistake “conflating,” suggesting he got his wires crossed.   University of California Irvine cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus speculated that Williams suffered from “false memory syndrome.”

             Before neuroscientists jump to conclusions to validate theories, more information about Williams stretching the truth through his career works against “false memory syndrome” hypothesis.  Williams was accused of embellishing events while covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, insisting he saw a body floating face-down from his Ritz-Carlton Hotel window.  New Orleans Law enforcement doubted Williams report citing too little flooding in New Orleans’ French Quarter.  Willaims report in Esquire Magazine that he was robbed at gunpoint while selling Christmas Trees in 1975 at a Church in Red Bank, N.J. was also disputed by locals.  Loftus suggesting that Williams suffers from “false memory syndrome” shows how easily forensic experts confuse naïve jurors in criminal trials.  Experts did the same thing to discredit ironclad DNA evidence in the sensational 1995 O.J. Simpson double-murder trial.

             Reported by David Corn Feb. 18 in “Mother Jones,” it looks like Fox News journalist Bill O’Reilly exaggerated his reports while covering the April 2, 1982 to June 14 Falkland Islands War.  O’Reilly, with five other CBS journalists, were some 1,200 miles from the “war zone” yet O’Reilly recounted Buenos Aires protests as a ‘war zone.”  “He is misrepresenting the situation he covered, and he is obviously doing so to burnish his credentials as a ‘war correspondent,’ which is not the work he was performing during the Falklands war,” wrote former CBS correspondent Eric Enberg.  “It is an absolute lie,” said Enberg about O’Reilly covering a “war zone,” insisting he was the only CBS journalist on the streets covering “riots” in Buenos Aires.  O’Reilly insisted his cameraman was run down on the streets bleeding.  “Nobody remembers this happening,” said former CBS correspondent Manny Alvarez also in Buenos Aires.

             Instead of humbly apologizing like Williams, O’Reilly went on the attack blaming the Mother Jones for the lowest form of yellow journalism.  Calling Mother Jones the “bottom rung of journalism in America,” O’Reilly dismissed Corn’s reporting as a left wing hit.  “All because of an irresponsible guttersnipe, a far-left zealot who’s attacked Fox News many times before, spit this stuff out on the Net,” O’Reilly insisted, sounding similar to former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton when she claimed in 1998 that the Monica Lewinsky affair was part of “a vast right wing conspiracy.”  O’Reilly’s stinging attack on Corn and Mother Jones gives the story more credibility.  O’Reilly’s fellow CBS reporters all dispute his 1982 story.  “Everything I’ve said about my reportorial career, everything is true,” said O’Reilly.  Calling O’Reilly Buenos Aires reports “absurd,” former CBS journalist Charles Krause remembers things differently.

             Krause recalls covering demonstrations in Buenos Aires, nothing, as O’Reilly reported, like “rioting.”  “There’s a difference between demonstrations and rioting,” Krause told “Media Matters.”  “I don’t recall there being rioting—there could have been scuffling,” said Krause, giving Fox News “The No Spin Zone” more wiggle room to excuse his exaggerated reports of the events.  O’Reilly corresponded with CBS New boss Ed Joyce back in 1982.  “The riot had not been very bad.  We were gassed and shot at and I had the best vantage point in which to report the story,” wrote O’Reilly, completely disputed by other CBS journalists at the scene.  Unlike the Williams case of “serial exaggeration,” Fox News showed no signs of taking the Mother Jones report seriously.  O’Reilly hasn’t been accused of exaggerating or make up stories while anchoring the “No Spin Zone” on Fox News.

              Refusing to take the Mother Jones report about O’Reilly’s war stories seriously, Fox News separated itself from NBC News, proving it’s not the same kind of news organization.  Considered a favorite in cable news, Fox News preaches to the conservative choir, not concerned about objectivity, only advancing the right’s agenda.  Valued as a nonpartisan news organization, NBC had to discipline Williams for what looks like serial exaggeration or hyperbole, not as neuroscientist Loftus labels a “false memory syndrome.”  “Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes [communication director of former President George H.W. Bush], and all senior management are in full support of Bill O’Reilly,” read an official company statement.  While caught in the same cookie jar, Williams’ transgressions are far more egregious because the industry knows Fox News isn’t “fair and balanced.”

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.


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