Former CBS correspondent Eric Engberg says the riot in Buenos Aires that followed the 1982 Falklands War 'wasn't a combat situation by any sense of the word that I know.'
- February 23, 2015
AceShowbiz -
Bill O'Reilly's former colleague has shared his own account of the situation during their experience in Argentina after the Falklands War. Eric Engberg, a retired CBS correspondent who was working with O'Reilly in Buenos Aires at the time, said O'Reilly exaggerated his war zone story.
In a lengthy Facebook post, Engberg slammed O'Reilly for "fabrication" of him being in a "combat situation" while reporting for CBS during the Falklands War in 1982. Engberg, who was also at the scene, said reporters were not even allowed to go to the Falkland Islands, where the combat between Great Britain and Argentina took place.
The American reporters "were all in the same, modern hotel and we never saw any troops, casualties or weapons. It was not a war zone or even close," he recounted. "It was not a war zone or even close."
He further told CNN's "Reliable Sources", "It wasn't a combat situation by any sense of the word that I know," and accused O'Reilly of "trying to build it up into a more frightening and deadly situation than it was."
In his Facebook post, Engberg also blasted O'Reilly for behaving "unprofessionally and without regard for the safety of the camera crew he was leading," when they were sent in to the street after the surrender statement, which led to a riot in Buenos Aires. He said that the camera crews were instructed not to use the lights to avoid attracting potentially violent people and making the cameraman an easier target for demonstrators throwing rocks, but O'Reilly demanded that his cameraman use his light for his reports.
Moreover, still according to Engberg, O'Reilly was upset when the CBS bureau chief in Buenos Aires, Larry Doyle, told O'Reilly that Bob Schieffer, who was senior correspondent on the scene, would be reporting the main story which partially included footage covered by the camera crews, including the one working with O'Reilly. O'Reilly reportedly shouted, "I didn't come down here to have my footage used by that old man," and he was later ordered out of Argentina by the CBS bosses because he "was a 'disruptive force' who threatened his bureau's morale and cohesion."
Engberg also disputed O'Reilly's claim that his "photographer got run down and hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete and the army was chasing us." Describing the riot as "relatively tame," Engberg added that "no one who reported back to our hotel newsroom after the disturbance was injured; if a cameraman had been 'bleeding from the ear' he would have immediately reported that to his superiors at the hotel."
O'Reilly previously defended himself after Mother Jones reported on Thursday, February 19 that the veteran journalist lied about him reporting combat on the Falkland Islands during the war between Britain and Argentina in 1982. He said, "Nobody was on the Falklands and I never said I was on the island, ever," adding that what he meant with "war zone in the Falklands" was street demonstrations in Buenos Aires that happened after the war.
He also hit back at one of the article's authors, David Corn, calling him "a guttersnipe liar." He said that Corn, "who works for the far-left magazine Mother Jones, smeared me, your humble correspondent, yesterday, saying I had fabricated some war reporting."