VoteVets demands that the news channel take action following accusations that O'Reilly lied about his experiences reporting on the 1982 Falklands War.
- February 21, 2015
AceShowbiz -
Bill O'Reilly could follow in the footsteps of Brian Williams who is suspended from NBC's "Nightly News" after he was caught lying about his experience in Iraq in 2003. Following accusations that O'Reilly lied about covering the Falklands War from the war zone, a leading veterans group is calling on Fox News to take action on this issue.
Jon Soltz, a chairman of progressive veterans advocacy group VoteVets, says in a statement, "NBC acted completely appropriately in taking Brian Williams off the air and looking into claims he's made over the years. Fox News has to do the same thing. The issue, for me, isn't that Fox has been caught off guard, and didn't realize O'Reilly was telling possibly false tales. That I can accept. It's what do they do about it now? That will tell us a lot about how seriously they take their news organization."
O'Reilly landed in hot water after Mother Jones reported on Thursday, February 19 that the veteran journalist said several times that he covered combat on the Falkland Islands during the war between Britain and Argentina in 1982, while no U.S. reporters ever got to the war zone when the fighting took place.
O'Reilly later hit back at one of the article's authors, David Corn, calling him "a guttersnipe liar." He told The Washington Post, "For years he's been trying to get Fox News. I would never speak to the man about anything at any time. He's a disgusting piece of garbage."
He also defended himself as saying, "Nobody was on the Falklands and I never said I was on the island, ever." What he meant with "war zone in the Falklands" was street demonstrations in Buenos Aires that happened after the war.
O'Reilly was also grilled about the issue when appearing on the "Hugh Hewitt Show" on Friday. Asked by Hewitt if he would "consider a riot a general combat definition," O'Reilly responded, "Yeah, when it's in a war setting, of course."
O'Reilly also took to his own show "The O'Reilly Factor" to react to the accusations. "Everything I've said about my reportorial career - everything - is true," so he claimed, adding that Corn, "who works for the far-left magazine Mother Jones, smeared me, your humble correspondent, yesterday, saying I had fabricated some war reporting."
