Image 01 Image 03

Mother Jones Suggests Bill O’Reilly Has A “Brian Williams Problem”

Mother Jones Suggests Bill O’Reilly Has A “Brian Williams Problem”

Out for blood

Knocking off a seminal left-leaning media figure was bound to incur backlash. And so it seems we have our response; Mother Jones is out to off Bill O’Reilly.

Late this afternoon, David Corn and Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones released a report suggesting Bill O’Reilly has a, “Brian Williams Problem.” They then accuse O’Reilly of saying, “he was in a “war zone” that apparently no American correspondent reached.”

The intrepid reporting duo began their damning tale by explaining (in a roundabout way, anyway) why they targeted O’Reilly:

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.”

Of course they neglect the various other discrepancies between Brian Williams’ claims and reality. Then they go on to make their case.

Their ‘scoop’ seems to revolve around how Mother Jones is defining, “war action” and other semantics they themselves haven’t yet pieced together. Namely that to cover The Falklands War and reporting directly from The Falklands are not mutually exclusive.

But back to the Mother Jones claim that the circumstance O’Reilly references, which occurred in 1982, do not constitute “war action”:

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 called David Corn a “despicable guttersnipe” and “a liar.” He denies any discrepancy, calling the entire Mother Jones piece “a piece of garbage.”

Dylan Byers of Politico has O’Reilly’s response:

“It’s a hit piece,” O’Reilly said. “Everything I said about what I reported in South and Central America is true. Everything.”

The report, published late Thursday, alleges that O’Reilly repeatedly misled viewers by claiming to have been in a war zone during the conflict between England and Argentina in 1982. In his book, in public appearances and on his television program, O’Reilly has claimed to have been “in an active war zone” in the Falklands, despite the fact that no American correspondents are believed to have reached the combat zones on the islands.

In the interview, O’Reilly said that he never claimed to have been on the Falkland Islands.

“I was not on the Falkland Islands and I never said I was. I was in Buenos Aires… In Buenos Aires we were in a combat situation after the Argentines surrendered.”

As he writes in The No Spin Zone, O’Reilly was in Buenos Aires when thousands of Argentines took to the streets to protest the military junta for surrendering to the Brits. O’Reilly says that the Army shot into the crowd. (Corn and his colleague Daniel Schulman say this was not war action.)

“It was clear that I did not say I was in the Falkland Islands. I’ve done myriad interviews over the years and I never said that,” O’Reilly told On Media.

Follow Kemberlee Kaye on Twitter

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Tags:

Comments

Gosh. What if they take out Bill O’Reilly? The horror the horror.

Let’s see Corn and his butt boi take on someone really tough.

Go after Megyn Kelly, Jonesing for Mother.

    Estragon in reply to Ragspierre. | February 20, 2015 at 1:07 am

    I’m no O’Reilly fan, but David Corn is a lying leftist pig and always has been.

    He is such a dedicated liar that I can never be sure, when I read a period in his work, that a sentence is really over or if it is just another lie.

Mother Jones is a lib shit-rag. It’s not even worth mentioning here.

    Phillep Harding in reply to Paul. | February 20, 2015 at 2:56 pm

    I used to read MJ and get worked up about whatever they covered. Then I missed 6 months and started catching up. The current mag had something in it that reminded me of something from 6 months before, so I looked it up.

    MJ was ripping into a politician for doing something they were ripping him for NOT doing 6 months before.

    That was the last MJ I read.

    It’s not the issues, it’s the power.

cleverusername512 | February 19, 2015 at 9:48 pm

“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.” -Bill O Reilly

So what you’re saying is that, by saying he was “inside” the Falklands, what that means is that he was OUTSIDE the Falklands. And when he said he was reporting “inside” a war zone, you believe that means he was reporting OUTSIDE a war zone. And his photographer, who he said was injured during a war in a war zone, was actually injured in a war zone thousands of miles away in a place that was not in a war zone. That makes perfect sense! His photographer was injured INSIDE a War Zone that was OUTSIDE a War Zone. Is it Opposite Day, or did Republicans recently decide that dictionaries and vocabulary are also liberal institutions that can’t be trusted?

    Since you put the statement in quotes, and attribute it to O’Reilly, I’m sure you can find an original source for the quote OTHER than the moonbat echo chamber where it currently flourishes.

    Go ahead.

Sammy Finkelman | February 19, 2015 at 10:19 pm

This maybe explains something I heard on the night of Tuesday, February 11, 2014. I was discussing Brian Williams with a group of friends, more or less, and someone said Bill O’Reilly had the same problem. I didn’t know what she was talking about and she only said that he does, but could not enlighten me. Now I think this must have been said by somebody on the radio somewhere, or online. It’s not just from today.

Sammy Finkelman | February 19, 2015 at 10:30 pm

I meant Tuesday, February 11, 2015. February 19 is pretty late too use by mistake the previous year, but I’ve come close to doing that a couple of times, at least in text searches. I did something like that a few days ago.

Brian Williams made a whole bunch of claims, not just one, and his problem wasn’t just interpretation, even with the chopper in Iraq.

There are two examples with Brian Williams I read somewhat later than others. He claimed to have been embedded at another time with the same Seal team, that did the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout, and that one of them gave him a piece of a plane or helicopter as a souvenir. Problems: They never embedded anybody, they wouldn’t take souvenirs, and if somebody did, they wouldn’t give it away. It’s like they had so many mementos they were handing out extras to anyone they knew. The second new issue is Brian Williams claiming he was in Berlin the day the Berlin Wall fell. Actually, only Tom Brokaw was there. Brian Williams arrived the next day.

“NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously…”

So, Williams was just mistaken? He said those things in error?

No, he blatantly LIED. Even after Williams was proven a liar, the left can’t bring themselves to admit it.

That’s all they have?

Seriously?

I do not like to watch more than the first five minutes of O’Riley and couldn’t care less what he says to others. I have been in combat and whether or not it was declared or not is not material to the person who was there. If troops are shooting your way indiscriminately you are in combat! That can be interpreted differently by different people but to that person it doesn’t matter. What Williams did is a totally different beast. He just simply lied and made up scenarios that did not exist for him. He didn’t misremember or make a mistake. He lied!

    Walker Evans in reply to inspectorudy. | February 20, 2015 at 4:46 pm

    “Those who have died in a ‘police action’ or ‘peace keeping mission’ are just as dead as those who have died in a real war.” — Me

    If a newsman is being shot at by armed people while covering any portion of an armed conflict, even it’s aftermath, that newsman has been under hostile fire and can legitimately state that fact as a fact. Mr/Ms 512 is entitled to his/her/its opinion but anyone who has any “in zone” experience knows that opinion is worthless.

Of course he does. You can rely on the sage counsel of the leftist stoners at Mother Jones.

If David Corn died and turned to fertilizer, I would not believe a word said by anyone who ate any of the vegetables grown on his patch of land.

Mother Jones must have assigned all their interns and gofers to comb thru all the statements ever made by Fox News personalities looking for discrepancies.

Ever since Eric chip-on-his-sHolder said that Fox News has nothing else to talk about except for crying foul about the admin not using words “Radical Islam” the left has felt ‘encouraged’ by our “Animus” Griping AG to flip their wrists at Fox.

There is no comparison between Williams and O’Reilly except in the minds of those who never listen to O’Reilly and hang on every half-truth of Williams (which then becomes ‘truth’ when you are high).

I quit watching BO when it was obvious that he has fallen for the Man Made Global Warming False Science Premise.

I’m sorry, but those people just make me cringe.

That many would believe the O’Reilly thing is the same demonstrates the real issue with propaganda. It can be thoroughly debunked, but the general populace only hears the lie, and it gets blurred with other news.

I have a niece-in-law, two college prof parents, doctor husband … she was certain it was a tea party person that shot Giffords, months later. Leftists so flood the zone with lies that Joe Average knows nothing, and what Joe thinks he knows, is wrong.

So with crushing deficits, open borders, HSBC laundering money for Mexican cartels (Lynch issue), IRS attacking citizens (the list goes on forever) … the great diversional debates are on whether Christians are like ISIS, are tea partiers racist, is Giuliani a hater, is record cold caused by man’s CO2.

The left controls the medium and gets to draw the public debate battle lines … so they draw them on Mars. We waste all day arguing the inane. But the real crimes go on in background under cover of the diversions. (I feel it less left versus right now, more criminal vs the people)

Every scandal or treasonous action is moderated with a moral equivalence. O’Reilly did it too, Bush did it, the Crusaders did it. And usually the answer is “no they didn’t, and it doesn’t matter if they did, let’s get back to the trial at hand”. But the defensive posture changes everything. It’s the race card, poverty card, world’s poor card, diversity card … played constantly by the gamers of propaganda.

theduchessofkitty | February 20, 2015 at 9:38 am

When the Falklands War was taking place, I was @ eight to nine years old, and living in Puerto Rico. I remember clearly news reports on TV and the papers that Beunos Aires was preparing like crazy to be attacked, especially after they received the news that the Brits had US support. It wasn’t just a battlefield in the Islands or the South Atlantic. Argentinians were expecting their capital city to be bombarded as well. That, and very strong patriotic fervor in the part of Argentinians.

Therefore, in the technical sense, Bill O’Reilly didn’t lie. So, suck it, Mother Jones!

Ha ha ha. The petty Far Right even slurs O’Rielly because he doesn’t march in robot lockstep 100% of the time with you. You’d demonize your own mothers if they deviated from the Tea Party script in an iota of difference. The rigidly opinionated Right – the Achiilles heel of the Republican Party.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to jayjerome66. | February 20, 2015 at 11:30 am

    Rigidly opinionated. I see you’ve had your sense of irony removed.

    Milhouse in reply to jayjerome66. | February 20, 2015 at 11:49 am

    What has O’Reilly got to do with the right? He’s never been a right-winger. He’s a populist, and he’s wrong far more often than he’s right. Why should we identify with him? But on this occasion he happened to be telling the truth, while Williams was deliberately telling lies.

    Walker Evans in reply to jayjerome66. | February 20, 2015 at 5:52 pm

    You should parse the sentence beginning “You’d demonize …”. Use a good dictionary and see if you can find the grammatical gaffs and misused language.

You know, Manfred Mann’s “Blinded By the Light” is still one of the best songs ever written. Makes stories like this at least readable.

But O’Reilly isn’t really a “news anchor.” He’s an entertainer. Very few people take him all that seriously.

Yet he’s still more credible than Brian Williams.

Bill O’Reilly has a Bill O’Reilly problem.

If the media trying to protect Brian Williams succeeded in finding another cable TV news talking head who has lied, how does that excuse or make any difference in Brian Williams’ lying? (“But mom! Johnny did it too!”).

Did the behaviors of Stalin mitigate the behaviors of Hitler?

    Ragspierre in reply to Henry Hawkins. | February 20, 2015 at 11:54 am

    What I find darkly amusing is the tea-pot tempest over anybody in the private sector inflating or lying about their creds.

    They can’t hurt me one iota.

    Now, Ol’ Walleyes Clinton and Pres. ScamWOW and their fellow tyrants in the Collective, they lie constantly and to terrible effect.

    They hurt us every day, and we need to focus on that.

I used to watch Fox News and O’Reilly nightly until 5 years ago, when I turned off my TV. While O’Reilly is on the right side of many issues, his whole schtick of being “fair” is annoying. But more than anything else he’s an egotistical bully and blowhard. Rush Limbaugh used to refer to him as Ted Baxter. To some extent he brought this on himself.