Bill O'Reilly faces new questions: His JFK story
By Tom Kludt @tomkludt
Just as Bill O'Reilly was trying to move on from a dispute over his war stories, the Fox News host suddenly has more questions to answer.
This time, the scrutiny is being directed at an account of his investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination.
O'Reilly's telling of it has gone like this: In 1977, Russian-born George de Mohrenschildt, who knew Lee Harvey Oswald, had been contacted by congressional investigators. O'Reilly, a reporter for a Dallas TV station, had tracked de Mohrenschildt down in Palm Beach, and arrived at the door to his daughter's home just as he shot himself.
O'Reilly shared that account in his book, "Killing Kennedy," and has repeated it on Fox News.
"As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood," O'Reilly wrote in his book. "By the way, that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly."
The question being raised: Was O'Reilly really there?
Jefferson Morley, a visiting professor at the University of California and a former editor at the Washington Post, doesn't think so. Writing for his website JFKFacts.org in 2013, Morley used phone recordings to dispute the dramatic account.
Morley's post resurfaced on Tuesday in a new report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.
The phone recordings, from the day of the suicide, came from the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, a congressional investigator involved in the JFK assassination probe.
Fonzi knew O'Reilly, and the recordings describe a conversation in which O'Reilly asked for confirmation of the suicide, according to Morley. Morley has posted a partial transcript and the recordings, though they are inaudible.
On the recordings, O'Reilly acknowledges he is in Dallas and plans to head to Florida, according to Morley.
Fonzi also recalled in his 1993 memoir that O'Reilly called him to confirm the suicide.
"Funny thing happened," Fonzi recalled O'Reilly saying over the phone. "We just aired a story that came over the wire about a Dutch journalist saying the Assassinations Committee has finally located de Mohrenschildt in South Florida. Now de Mohren--schildt's attorney, a guy named Pat Russell, he calls and says de Mohrenschildt committed suicide this afternoon. Is that true?"
Fonzi's widow, Marie, told Morley in 2013 that "Gaet liked O'Reilly and did lots to help him." But she insisted O'Reilly was nowhere near the scene of the suicide. "I know O'Reilly was in Dallas," she said. "There is no question about it."
Another possible red flag in O'Reilly's account: An Associated Press report at the time quoted a member of the Palm Beach County, Florida sheriff's office who said that de Mohrenschildt was home alone at the time of his suicide "except for two maids who said they did not hear the shot."
When reached for comment, a Fox News spokesperson referred CNNMoney to Henry Holt and Company, the imprint that published O'Reilly's book on the Kennedy assassination.
These questions follow another public dispute involving O'Reilly's characterization of his time covering the Falklands War in 1982.
O'Reilly has made several references over the years to being in a "war zone" and a "combat situation" during that conflict. Since he and most reporters covered the war from Buenos Aires, the question was whether a protest he covered fit those descriptions.
By Tom Kludt @tomkludt
Just as Bill O'Reilly was trying to move on from a dispute over his war stories, the Fox News host suddenly has more questions to answer.
This time, the scrutiny is being directed at an account of his investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination.
O'Reilly's telling of it has gone like this: In 1977, Russian-born George de Mohrenschildt, who knew Lee Harvey Oswald, had been contacted by congressional investigators. O'Reilly, a reporter for a Dallas TV station, had tracked de Mohrenschildt down in Palm Beach, and arrived at the door to his daughter's home just as he shot himself.
O'Reilly shared that account in his book, "Killing Kennedy," and has repeated it on Fox News.
"As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood," O'Reilly wrote in his book. "By the way, that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly."
The question being raised: Was O'Reilly really there?
Jefferson Morley, a visiting professor at the University of California and a former editor at the Washington Post, doesn't think so. Writing for his website JFKFacts.org in 2013, Morley used phone recordings to dispute the dramatic account.
Morley's post resurfaced on Tuesday in a new report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.
The phone recordings, from the day of the suicide, came from the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, a congressional investigator involved in the JFK assassination probe.
Fonzi knew O'Reilly, and the recordings describe a conversation in which O'Reilly asked for confirmation of the suicide, according to Morley. Morley has posted a partial transcript and the recordings, though they are inaudible.
On the recordings, O'Reilly acknowledges he is in Dallas and plans to head to Florida, according to Morley.
Fonzi also recalled in his 1993 memoir that O'Reilly called him to confirm the suicide.
"Funny thing happened," Fonzi recalled O'Reilly saying over the phone. "We just aired a story that came over the wire about a Dutch journalist saying the Assassinations Committee has finally located de Mohrenschildt in South Florida. Now de Mohren--schildt's attorney, a guy named Pat Russell, he calls and says de Mohrenschildt committed suicide this afternoon. Is that true?"
Fonzi's widow, Marie, told Morley in 2013 that "Gaet liked O'Reilly and did lots to help him." But she insisted O'Reilly was nowhere near the scene of the suicide. "I know O'Reilly was in Dallas," she said. "There is no question about it."
Another possible red flag in O'Reilly's account: An Associated Press report at the time quoted a member of the Palm Beach County, Florida sheriff's office who said that de Mohrenschildt was home alone at the time of his suicide "except for two maids who said they did not hear the shot."
When reached for comment, a Fox News spokesperson referred CNNMoney to Henry Holt and Company, the imprint that published O'Reilly's book on the Kennedy assassination.
These questions follow another public dispute involving O'Reilly's characterization of his time covering the Falklands War in 1982.
O'Reilly has made several references over the years to being in a "war zone" and a "combat situation" during that conflict. Since he and most reporters covered the war from Buenos Aires, the question was whether a protest he covered fit those descriptions.
What Bill O'Reilly owes America
By Errol Louis, CNN Political Commentator
Updated 9:56 PM ET, Wed February 25, 2015
Story highlights
Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, grappling with accusations that he embellished and/or fabricated reports placing him at the center of dramatic news events, tipped his hand more than he realized by threatening one of the many journalists asking questions about the accuracy of his accounts.
"I am coming after you with everything I have," O'Reilly told New York Times reporter Emily Steel. "You can take it as a threat."
Bad move, Bill.
Errol Louis
In the real world of tough guys (as opposed to celebrity blowhards), that kind of empty threat only comes from a sore loser -- somebody unable to control or hide his anger, fright and impotence over the fact he has been cornered and beaten. There is nothing O'Reilly can do to harm The New York Times, its reporters or any other journalist doing their job, and he surely knows that.
So why the tantrum?
Part of it is O'Reilly's style. He is a fabulously wealthy, best-selling author and the host of a show that has dominated prime-time cable news for many years. One way he got to the top of the heap was by styling himself as a plain-spoken, working-class battler, willing to mix it up verbally with those who disagree with him.
As ex-Rep. Barney Frank -- a gay, outspokenly liberal Democrat who sparred with O'Reilly -- explained to The Daily Beast: "When you go on his show, you have two choices: either be reasonable and let him dominate with his ranting, or yell back at him. You either look timid or as boorish as he is."
The verbal fireworks make for a certain kind of TV that can be fun to watch and has proved enormously popular, but it doesn't give O'Reilly a pass to make things up and not get called on it. His dramatic claims to have reported from a war zone during the Falklands conflict -- an account complete with troops firing into crowds, a gun pointed at his head and O'Reilly saving a gravely wounded colleague -- has been disputed by seven of his colleagues who were on assignment in Argentina with him.
More recently, reporters have questioned O'Reilly's claim -- printed in his book, "Killing Kennedy" -- to have heard the gunshot that killed George de Mohrenschildt, a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed President John Kennedy.
Mohrenschildt's death was dramatic, important news: He killed himself in Florida shortly after being contacted by congressional investigators probing the assassination. It's hard to believe that O'Reilly, then working on stories about the assassination for Dallas television station WFAA, would have sat on the news that he was present and heard the shotgun blast that killed Mohrenschildt.
Once again, a little probing by journalists turns up evidence from reliable sources that O'Reilly's account is probably false.
Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post editor, has posted audio tapes of O'Reilly talking with a congressional investigator around the time of the incident in conversations that leave little doubt that O'Reilly was in Dallas at the time Mohrenschildt died.
"He was in Dallas" says Tracy Rowlett, who worked at WFAA at the time, according to the Huffington Post. "Bill O'Reilly's a phony -- there's no other way to put it."
Sally Quinn, former columnist and veteran Washington insider who is a friend of O'Reilly's, defended him in a way that is less than helpful.
"O'Reilly is an entertainer and everything he does is totally subjective, including his memories," she told The Daily Beast. "To attack him is simply to increase his ratings and the sales of his phenomenally popular books. Lighten up, everybody."
That's easier said than done, especially after O'Reilly chose to start threatening reporters. His best move now would be to do the difficult, responsible thing, the thing truly great journalists have been doing for decades: admit he screwed up, apologize and try to move on.
That might damage his brand as the swaggering no-spin guy, and it might even lose him some viewers. But it would begin to restore his reputation in a profession that isn't perfect and doesn't expect its practitioners to be -- but also doesn't expect valid questions to be answered with the snarling, empty threats of a coward.
By Errol Louis, CNN Political Commentator
Updated 9:56 PM ET, Wed February 25, 2015
Story highlights
- Errol Louis: Bill O'Reilly, accused of fabricating reports, threatened NYT reporter, saying: "I'm coming after you..."
- Louis: He placed himself in stories he was not in, former colleagues say. O'Reilly should come clean, apologize
Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, grappling with accusations that he embellished and/or fabricated reports placing him at the center of dramatic news events, tipped his hand more than he realized by threatening one of the many journalists asking questions about the accuracy of his accounts.
"I am coming after you with everything I have," O'Reilly told New York Times reporter Emily Steel. "You can take it as a threat."
Bad move, Bill.
In the real world of tough guys (as opposed to celebrity blowhards), that kind of empty threat only comes from a sore loser -- somebody unable to control or hide his anger, fright and impotence over the fact he has been cornered and beaten. There is nothing O'Reilly can do to harm The New York Times, its reporters or any other journalist doing their job, and he surely knows that.
So why the tantrum?
Part of it is O'Reilly's style. He is a fabulously wealthy, best-selling author and the host of a show that has dominated prime-time cable news for many years. One way he got to the top of the heap was by styling himself as a plain-spoken, working-class battler, willing to mix it up verbally with those who disagree with him.
As ex-Rep. Barney Frank -- a gay, outspokenly liberal Democrat who sparred with O'Reilly -- explained to The Daily Beast: "When you go on his show, you have two choices: either be reasonable and let him dominate with his ranting, or yell back at him. You either look timid or as boorish as he is."
The verbal fireworks make for a certain kind of TV that can be fun to watch and has proved enormously popular, but it doesn't give O'Reilly a pass to make things up and not get called on it. His dramatic claims to have reported from a war zone during the Falklands conflict -- an account complete with troops firing into crowds, a gun pointed at his head and O'Reilly saving a gravely wounded colleague -- has been disputed by seven of his colleagues who were on assignment in Argentina with him.
More recently, reporters have questioned O'Reilly's claim -- printed in his book, "Killing Kennedy" -- to have heard the gunshot that killed George de Mohrenschildt, a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who killed President John Kennedy.
Mohrenschildt's death was dramatic, important news: He killed himself in Florida shortly after being contacted by congressional investigators probing the assassination. It's hard to believe that O'Reilly, then working on stories about the assassination for Dallas television station WFAA, would have sat on the news that he was present and heard the shotgun blast that killed Mohrenschildt.
Once again, a little probing by journalists turns up evidence from reliable sources that O'Reilly's account is probably false.
Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post editor, has posted audio tapes of O'Reilly talking with a congressional investigator around the time of the incident in conversations that leave little doubt that O'Reilly was in Dallas at the time Mohrenschildt died.
"He was in Dallas" says Tracy Rowlett, who worked at WFAA at the time, according to the Huffington Post. "Bill O'Reilly's a phony -- there's no other way to put it."
Sally Quinn, former columnist and veteran Washington insider who is a friend of O'Reilly's, defended him in a way that is less than helpful.
"O'Reilly is an entertainer and everything he does is totally subjective, including his memories," she told The Daily Beast. "To attack him is simply to increase his ratings and the sales of his phenomenally popular books. Lighten up, everybody."
That's easier said than done, especially after O'Reilly chose to start threatening reporters. His best move now would be to do the difficult, responsible thing, the thing truly great journalists have been doing for decades: admit he screwed up, apologize and try to move on.
That might damage his brand as the swaggering no-spin guy, and it might even lose him some viewers. But it would begin to restore his reputation in a profession that isn't perfect and doesn't expect its practitioners to be -- but also doesn't expect valid questions to be answered with the snarling, empty threats of a coward.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/cbs-releases-falklands-protest-footage-bill-oreilly
CBS has released the Falklands protest video Bill O'Reilly asked for. It doesn't support his claims.
The Fox News host says he was in a "war zone" where police gunned down civilians. The video doesn't show that.
CBS News today posted its reports [1] from Buenos Aires at the end of the Falklands war, in response to a request from Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who has been seeking to counter reports [2] that he mischaracterized [3] his wartime reporting experience. But rather than bolstering O'Reilly's description of the anti-government protest he says he covered as a "combat situation," [4] the tape corroborates the accounts of other journalists who were there and who have described it as simply a chaotic, violent protest.
On his Monday night show, O'Reilly broadcast clips from the CBS video and maintained that the footage proved "I reported accurately the violence was horrific." But the issue has not been whether violence occurred at the demonstration. O'Reilly had previously claimed this protest—triggered when Argentines angry at the ruling junta's surrender to the Brits in the 1982 war gathered near the presidential palace—was a massacre, with Argentine troops gunning down civilians. O'Reilly has relied on that description to support his claim that he was in a "war zone…in the Falklands." The video does not show civilians being mowed down.
O'Reilly, who was reporting on the protest as a correspondent for CBS News, has asserted that during the demonstration, Argentine soldiers fired into the crowd with "real bullets" [5] and slaughtered "many" [6] civilians. As he put it in a 2009 interview [7], "Here in the United States we would use tear gas and rubber bullets. They were doing real bullets. They were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the street."
Mother Jones reported [3] that O'Reilly's account of the protest was at odds with media reports from the time, which made no mention of troops firing real bullets into the crowd or civilians killed:
A defiant O'Reilly appeared on Fox's MediaBuzz Sunday, calling Engberg a "coward" and noting he had asked CBS to provide him with footage from the demonstrations. The footage—which includes four clips that aired on June 15 and 16, 1982—depicts angry protesters pelting police with sticks and coins. It shows police advancing on protesters and blasting tear gas and plastic bullets into the crowd. "There were arrests and beatings," Engberg, who was one of several CBS correspondents covering the event, reported in one segment. "Then, with guns that fired tear gas and plastic bullets, police opened fire. It is not known how many were hurt. But witnesses reported at least some serious injuries."
In another clip, CBS correspondent Charles Gomez reported, "As the mob grew to 10,000, they broke through police lines, pelting offices with coins and garbage. The police responded using tear gas guns and shotguns firing plastic bullets. An unknown number of demonstrators were injured." The footage captured a dramatic clash—including a shot of a protester, apparently injured, lying on the ground—but none of this footage shows Argentine military or police firing into the crowd with live ammunition and killing civilians.
Today, an Argentine historian named Federico G. Lorenz [11], who has written extensively on the Falklands war, told [12] the Washington Post:
Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/cbs-releases-falklands-protest-footage-bill-oreilly
CBS has released the Falklands protest video Bill O'Reilly asked for. It doesn't support his claims.
The Fox News host says he was in a "war zone" where police gunned down civilians. The video doesn't show that.
CBS News today posted its reports [1] from Buenos Aires at the end of the Falklands war, in response to a request from Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who has been seeking to counter reports [2] that he mischaracterized [3] his wartime reporting experience. But rather than bolstering O'Reilly's description of the anti-government protest he says he covered as a "combat situation," [4] the tape corroborates the accounts of other journalists who were there and who have described it as simply a chaotic, violent protest.
On his Monday night show, O'Reilly broadcast clips from the CBS video and maintained that the footage proved "I reported accurately the violence was horrific." But the issue has not been whether violence occurred at the demonstration. O'Reilly had previously claimed this protest—triggered when Argentines angry at the ruling junta's surrender to the Brits in the 1982 war gathered near the presidential palace—was a massacre, with Argentine troops gunning down civilians. O'Reilly has relied on that description to support his claim that he was in a "war zone…in the Falklands." The video does not show civilians being mowed down.
O'Reilly, who was reporting on the protest as a correspondent for CBS News, has asserted that during the demonstration, Argentine soldiers fired into the crowd with "real bullets" [5] and slaughtered "many" [6] civilians. As he put it in a 2009 interview [7], "Here in the United States we would use tear gas and rubber bullets. They were doing real bullets. They were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the street."
Mother Jones reported [3] that O'Reilly's account of the protest was at odds with media reports from the time, which made no mention of troops firing real bullets into the crowd or civilians killed:
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.
On Sunday, CNN reported [8] that seven of O'Reilly's former CBS colleagues disputed his claim that Argentine soldiers had fired live rounds at civilians. They also questioned O'Reilly's assertion that this protest constituted "combat" and occurred in a "war zone." Former CBS correspondent Eric Engberg, who wrote a lengthy Facebook post [9] debunking O'Reilly's Falklands claims, said Buenos Aires "was not a war zone or even close. It was an 'expense account zone.'" And Richard Meislin, the former New York Times reporter whose account of the protest was selectively quoted by O'Reilly on a Fox News show on Sunday, noted [10] on Facebook, "As far as I know, no demonstrators were shot or killed by police in Buenos Aires that night. What I saw on the streets that night was a demonstration—passionate, chaotic and memorable—but it would be hard to confuse it with being in a war zone."
A defiant O'Reilly appeared on Fox's MediaBuzz Sunday, calling Engberg a "coward" and noting he had asked CBS to provide him with footage from the demonstrations. The footage—which includes four clips that aired on June 15 and 16, 1982—depicts angry protesters pelting police with sticks and coins. It shows police advancing on protesters and blasting tear gas and plastic bullets into the crowd. "There were arrests and beatings," Engberg, who was one of several CBS correspondents covering the event, reported in one segment. "Then, with guns that fired tear gas and plastic bullets, police opened fire. It is not known how many were hurt. But witnesses reported at least some serious injuries."
In another clip, CBS correspondent Charles Gomez reported, "As the mob grew to 10,000, they broke through police lines, pelting offices with coins and garbage. The police responded using tear gas guns and shotguns firing plastic bullets. An unknown number of demonstrators were injured." The footage captured a dramatic clash—including a shot of a protester, apparently injured, lying on the ground—but none of this footage shows Argentine military or police firing into the crowd with live ammunition and killing civilians.
Today, an Argentine historian named Federico G. Lorenz [11], who has written extensively on the Falklands war, told [12] the Washington Post:
As far as I know, there were no people killed at the protests after the news of the Argentine surrendering arrived to [Buenos Aires]. There were incidents at May Square…and people slightly injured due to gasses and anti riot munition, but not dead people. Press from June 15, 1982, reports about 5 buses burnt "many detainees and injured people." One of the photographs shows precisely a wounded [person] lying surrounded by people.
As he showed the CBS footage on his show, O'Reilly claimed that unidentified local media sources had reported fatalities. "We don't know how many deaths," he remarked. And he insisted, "I told it exactly the way it was." Referring to the controversy about his Falklands claims, he said, "I want to stop this now. I hope we can stop it."
Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/cbs-releases-falklands-protest-footage-bill-oreilly
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/25/how-o-reilly-keeps-getting-away-with-it.html
How Bill O’Reilly Keeps Getting Away With It
It doesn’t matter what accusations are leveled at the veteran Fox News host, whatever the new evidence he will shout it down louder than ever.
Poor Bill O’Reilly.
The beleaguered Fox News star—who in recent days has faced unwelcome scrutiny for his tall tales about covering the 1982 Falklands war, and on Tuesday had his veracity further challenged by a report that he fabricated an account of his journalistic exploits in his supposedly nonfiction book, Killing Kennedy—is upset that rival media outlets are being so mean and nasty to him.
“On a personal note, I’m pretty tired of all the garbage,” the most popular man on cable television complained Tuesday night during a self-pitying segment on The O’Reilly Factor.
By now, pretty much anybody who cares about such things knows that O’Reilly was either repeatedly and recklessly imprecise in publicly recalling his brief stint in Buenos Aires 32 years ago covering a riot of angry Argentines after the military junta surrendered to the British navy, or else he actively embellished his role as a rookie CBS News correspondent who supposedly dodged bullets while being chased by the Argentine army, faced down a young soldier pointing an M-16 at his head, and dragged his injured, bleeding cameraman to safety in the middle of a “combat situation”—while his colleagues cowered in their rooms at the Sheraton.
Meanwhile, Fox News is crowing about a big uptick in O’Reilly’s already world-beating ratings. Monday night’s program garnered 3.3 million viewers—the highest Nielsen numbers yet for 2015—and boasted 568,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic for which advertisers pay a premium. So if history is any guide, O’Reilly will emerge without a scratch.
Yet he doesn’t sound like a particularly happy warrior. Lefty journalist David Corn, whom O’Reilly has called “a guttersnipe” and “a piece of garbage” in recent days, deserves to be “in the kill zone,” he snarled to the TV Newser blog. Corn is the co-author of the Mother Jonesarticle, “Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem,” that started the Fox News anchor’s ordeal last Thursday.
O’Reilly pal Sally Quinn, widow of legendary Washington Posteditor Ben Bradlee, took issue with Mother Jones’s thesis, telling The Daily Beast: “I think it’s ridiculous to compare Bill O'Reilly to Brian Williams [the NBC anchor who was punished two weeks ago with a six-month unpaid suspension for exaggerating his wartime exploits in Iraq]. O’Reilly is an entertainer and everything he does is totally subjective, including his memories. To attack him is simply to increase his ratings and the sales of his phenomenally popular books. Lighten up, everybody.”
“Lightening up” might have been difficult on Monday evening, when O’Reilly warned The New York Times media reporter Emily Steel that if he didn’t like what she wrote about him, “I am coming after you with everything I have. You can take it as a threat.”
O’Reilly’s quote to the Times, with its exhilarating promise of violence (the rhetorical kind, surely), gave extended life to an undesirable storyline that Fox News’s publicity juggernaut had been toiling assiduously, and until that moment fairly successfully, to tamp down and snuff out as the new week commenced. But it is now Day 6 and counting of O’Reillypalooza.
Overwhelming aggression is how O’Reilly rolls, and how he manages in the end to skate away from each potentially career-harming controversy: answer every criticism with total warfare; respond to a lobbed grenade by going nuclear. In this sense, at least—despite his doubters and detractors—he exists in a perpetual war zone.
“Bill has always been a combative personality,” said his longtime friend Steve Cohen, who as news director of Channel 2 in New York, the CBS-owned-and-operated station, hired him on the reporting staff three decades ago. “He was combative about what he saw as justice and injustice. He had a highly refined sense of what he thinks is right and wrong. He had a sense of justice about stories, or of what other folks in the news business were doing to each other, or about himself. He was always someone who felt he had to stand his ground and be engaged in battle. I think his view of the world is that there’s a battle going on, and he is, in some sense, a crusader for what he believes in.”
An O’Reilly pal from his local news days in Boston, former WCVB news director Phil Balboni, declined to take a position in the current controversy over O’Reilly’s alleged embellishments, but said: “I know him to be a person of real integrity, and while he has an outsized personality, he’d probably be the first person to acknowledge it.” Balboni, who hired O’Reilly at the ABC station after his CBS career fizzled, added: “I’ve never known him to exaggerate the truth or to make up a story about himself. I’m not surprised that he would be vigorously defending his reputation. I think anybody in this circumstance would do the same. As to how vigorously, I would leave it to others to determine the proportionality.”
Former Washington Post editor Jefferson Morley came away from a 2003 appearance in The Factor’s so-called “No-Spin Zone”—where he was booked to discuss Arab media reaction to the U.S. military’s ouster of Saddam Hussein—with a slightly different impression.
“What I remember was his relentless bullying that was not on the point, which I just kind of parried and tried to step out of his way,” said Morley, who authored Tuesday’s article that convincingly demonstrates—through audio recordings of phone calls and other strong evidence—that O’Reilly was far away in Dallas, Texas, when he claims in his Kennedy book, on Page 300, that he was knocking on a door in Palm Beach, Fla., and “heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide” of a former CIA informant with apparent knowledge of the Kennedy assassination. (Fox News didn’t offer a comment on Morley’s article.)
“It was shortly after Saddam’s statue was pulled down and O’Reilly said, ‘Well, we showed them, didn’t we?’ and I said, ‘Not really, if you read the Arab press,’” Morley recalled of his Fox News appearance. “It was as if he wanted to impute to me his own animus. He wanted to create a target. That’s why I felt it was bullying. But, hey, that’s showbiz.”
The bullying theme comes up a lot among veteran guests of The Factor,some of whom seem to be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.It is, indeed, a rare soul who can withstand the O’Reilly onslaught.
“He is a bully,” said retired Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, whose memorable October 2008 dustup on The Factor is a YouTube favorite. Democrat Frank, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, quickly found himself in a shouting match with O’Reilly, who repeatedly called him a “coward” who was dispensing “BS” and “crap” about the causes of the financial meltdown; Frank gave as good as he got, calling O’Reilly “stupid” and “boorish.”
“I’ve never been on any other show where the host literally and physically controlled the microphone and controls the conversation,” Frank told The Daily Beast. “He also has another tactic I’ve noticed. He will call you out with what he thinks is a gotcha, but when it’s clear it’s not a gotcha he immediately changes the subject. He has very little tolerance for honest disagreement.”
Frank added: “When you go on his show, you have two choices: either be reasonable and let him dominate with his ranting, or yell back at him. You either look timid or as boorish as he is. One of my advantages it that I have long ago accepted the fact that avoiding boorishness was probably beyond me.”
Thus Frank said he’s looking forward to going on The Factor next month to promote his memoir, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage.
Comedian Joy Behar, a longtime cohost on ABC’s The View,famously walked off the syndicated daytime show in October 2010, along with cohost Whoopi Goldberg, after guest panelist O’Reilly shouted and gesticulated at them during a heated argument about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”
“I walked off because I had the feeling I was being bullied, and I think bullies should be called out,” Behar told The Daily Beast. She added that O’Reilly should be careful when he hurls insults at the co-author of the Mother Jones article. “Don’t fuck with David Corn,” she said. “David Corn is one tough hombre.”
Jeremy Glick, today an assistant professor of Caribbean literature at Hunter College, had his own notable baptism by fire during a 2003 appearance in which O’Reilly lost his temper on the air and, when the cameras were turned off, invited Glick to leave his studio immediately or, according to some accounts, O’Reilly threatened, “I’ll rip your fucking head off.”
Glick’s father, Barry, a worker at the Port Authority, was among the thousands who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center; O’Reilly was outraged that Glick had signed a newspaper ad criticizing President George W. Bush’s military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You keep your mouth shut,” O’Reilly yelled at Glick at one point, pointing a finger in his face. “You have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country...I hope your mom isn’t watching this...Cut his mike! I’m not gonna dress you down any more.”
The 2004 documentary Outfoxed; Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalismshows how O’Reilly continued to attack Glick, and mischaracterize his views, long after he was ejected from the studio.
Twelve years after his close encounter, Glick told The Daily Beast: “Why would you expect rational, reasonable thinking from someone who doesn’t know the difference between a falafel and a loofa sponge?”—a reference to allegations of sexually charged comments, and apparent confusion on O’Reilly’s part, in an embarrassing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against O’Reilly by one of his female producers. The headline-making suit was settled out of court in October 2004.
During Tuesday’s pity-party on The Factor, O’Reilly and Fox Business Network personality John Stossel, an avowed libertarian, enumerated all the ways in which the liberal media elite had snubbed, dissed and otherwise marginalized them during their pre-Fox decades in network television because they didn’t embrace the left-wing orthodoxy of tougher gun laws, abortion on demand, government regulation, and taxpayer-funded welfare—an attitude which Stossel summed up as “Any civilized person thinks that way, and if you don’t, you’re a cretin, and we’re gonna get you.”
O’Reilly commiserated with his fellow victim: “You know as well as everybody in this building that if you go out and say, ‘I work for Fox News’ at a party or anything like that, you’re gonna get people who hate you, they don’t even know you, just because you work at FNC.”
“Totally,” Stossel agreed. “They’ll just turn around and walk away.”
But lest The Factor’sloyal viewership burst into tears at the unfairness of it all, O’Reilly injected some levity: “Stossel and I have known each other for a very long time, when we covered the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Just a little jest, there, Stossel—you know what I’m talkin’ about?”
How Bill O’Reilly Keeps Getting Away With It
It doesn’t matter what accusations are leveled at the veteran Fox News host, whatever the new evidence he will shout it down louder than ever.
Poor Bill O’Reilly.
The beleaguered Fox News star—who in recent days has faced unwelcome scrutiny for his tall tales about covering the 1982 Falklands war, and on Tuesday had his veracity further challenged by a report that he fabricated an account of his journalistic exploits in his supposedly nonfiction book, Killing Kennedy—is upset that rival media outlets are being so mean and nasty to him.
“On a personal note, I’m pretty tired of all the garbage,” the most popular man on cable television complained Tuesday night during a self-pitying segment on The O’Reilly Factor.
By now, pretty much anybody who cares about such things knows that O’Reilly was either repeatedly and recklessly imprecise in publicly recalling his brief stint in Buenos Aires 32 years ago covering a riot of angry Argentines after the military junta surrendered to the British navy, or else he actively embellished his role as a rookie CBS News correspondent who supposedly dodged bullets while being chased by the Argentine army, faced down a young soldier pointing an M-16 at his head, and dragged his injured, bleeding cameraman to safety in the middle of a “combat situation”—while his colleagues cowered in their rooms at the Sheraton.
“To attack him is simply to increase his ratings.”
And yet, because he is Bill O’Reilly, he is grinning (or at least baring his teeth) through his personal apocalypse and brandishing a swift sword at his presumably contemptible enemies. Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, as he has so often during O’Reilly flaps of the past, is backing his boy to the hilt, having issued a statement that “Ailes and all senior management are in full support of Bill O'Reilly.”
Meanwhile, Fox News is crowing about a big uptick in O’Reilly’s already world-beating ratings. Monday night’s program garnered 3.3 million viewers—the highest Nielsen numbers yet for 2015—and boasted 568,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic for which advertisers pay a premium. So if history is any guide, O’Reilly will emerge without a scratch.
Yet he doesn’t sound like a particularly happy warrior. Lefty journalist David Corn, whom O’Reilly has called “a guttersnipe” and “a piece of garbage” in recent days, deserves to be “in the kill zone,” he snarled to the TV Newser blog. Corn is the co-author of the Mother Jonesarticle, “Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem,” that started the Fox News anchor’s ordeal last Thursday.
O’Reilly pal Sally Quinn, widow of legendary Washington Posteditor Ben Bradlee, took issue with Mother Jones’s thesis, telling The Daily Beast: “I think it’s ridiculous to compare Bill O'Reilly to Brian Williams [the NBC anchor who was punished two weeks ago with a six-month unpaid suspension for exaggerating his wartime exploits in Iraq]. O’Reilly is an entertainer and everything he does is totally subjective, including his memories. To attack him is simply to increase his ratings and the sales of his phenomenally popular books. Lighten up, everybody.”
“Lightening up” might have been difficult on Monday evening, when O’Reilly warned The New York Times media reporter Emily Steel that if he didn’t like what she wrote about him, “I am coming after you with everything I have. You can take it as a threat.”
O’Reilly’s quote to the Times, with its exhilarating promise of violence (the rhetorical kind, surely), gave extended life to an undesirable storyline that Fox News’s publicity juggernaut had been toiling assiduously, and until that moment fairly successfully, to tamp down and snuff out as the new week commenced. But it is now Day 6 and counting of O’Reillypalooza.
Overwhelming aggression is how O’Reilly rolls, and how he manages in the end to skate away from each potentially career-harming controversy: answer every criticism with total warfare; respond to a lobbed grenade by going nuclear. In this sense, at least—despite his doubters and detractors—he exists in a perpetual war zone.
“Bill has always been a combative personality,” said his longtime friend Steve Cohen, who as news director of Channel 2 in New York, the CBS-owned-and-operated station, hired him on the reporting staff three decades ago. “He was combative about what he saw as justice and injustice. He had a highly refined sense of what he thinks is right and wrong. He had a sense of justice about stories, or of what other folks in the news business were doing to each other, or about himself. He was always someone who felt he had to stand his ground and be engaged in battle. I think his view of the world is that there’s a battle going on, and he is, in some sense, a crusader for what he believes in.”
An O’Reilly pal from his local news days in Boston, former WCVB news director Phil Balboni, declined to take a position in the current controversy over O’Reilly’s alleged embellishments, but said: “I know him to be a person of real integrity, and while he has an outsized personality, he’d probably be the first person to acknowledge it.” Balboni, who hired O’Reilly at the ABC station after his CBS career fizzled, added: “I’ve never known him to exaggerate the truth or to make up a story about himself. I’m not surprised that he would be vigorously defending his reputation. I think anybody in this circumstance would do the same. As to how vigorously, I would leave it to others to determine the proportionality.”
Former Washington Post editor Jefferson Morley came away from a 2003 appearance in The Factor’s so-called “No-Spin Zone”—where he was booked to discuss Arab media reaction to the U.S. military’s ouster of Saddam Hussein—with a slightly different impression.
“What I remember was his relentless bullying that was not on the point, which I just kind of parried and tried to step out of his way,” said Morley, who authored Tuesday’s article that convincingly demonstrates—through audio recordings of phone calls and other strong evidence—that O’Reilly was far away in Dallas, Texas, when he claims in his Kennedy book, on Page 300, that he was knocking on a door in Palm Beach, Fla., and “heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide” of a former CIA informant with apparent knowledge of the Kennedy assassination. (Fox News didn’t offer a comment on Morley’s article.)
“It was shortly after Saddam’s statue was pulled down and O’Reilly said, ‘Well, we showed them, didn’t we?’ and I said, ‘Not really, if you read the Arab press,’” Morley recalled of his Fox News appearance. “It was as if he wanted to impute to me his own animus. He wanted to create a target. That’s why I felt it was bullying. But, hey, that’s showbiz.”
The bullying theme comes up a lot among veteran guests of The Factor,some of whom seem to be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.It is, indeed, a rare soul who can withstand the O’Reilly onslaught.
“He is a bully,” said retired Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, whose memorable October 2008 dustup on The Factor is a YouTube favorite. Democrat Frank, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, quickly found himself in a shouting match with O’Reilly, who repeatedly called him a “coward” who was dispensing “BS” and “crap” about the causes of the financial meltdown; Frank gave as good as he got, calling O’Reilly “stupid” and “boorish.”
“I’ve never been on any other show where the host literally and physically controlled the microphone and controls the conversation,” Frank told The Daily Beast. “He also has another tactic I’ve noticed. He will call you out with what he thinks is a gotcha, but when it’s clear it’s not a gotcha he immediately changes the subject. He has very little tolerance for honest disagreement.”
Frank added: “When you go on his show, you have two choices: either be reasonable and let him dominate with his ranting, or yell back at him. You either look timid or as boorish as he is. One of my advantages it that I have long ago accepted the fact that avoiding boorishness was probably beyond me.”
Thus Frank said he’s looking forward to going on The Factor next month to promote his memoir, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage.
Comedian Joy Behar, a longtime cohost on ABC’s The View,famously walked off the syndicated daytime show in October 2010, along with cohost Whoopi Goldberg, after guest panelist O’Reilly shouted and gesticulated at them during a heated argument about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”
“I walked off because I had the feeling I was being bullied, and I think bullies should be called out,” Behar told The Daily Beast. She added that O’Reilly should be careful when he hurls insults at the co-author of the Mother Jones article. “Don’t fuck with David Corn,” she said. “David Corn is one tough hombre.”
Jeremy Glick, today an assistant professor of Caribbean literature at Hunter College, had his own notable baptism by fire during a 2003 appearance in which O’Reilly lost his temper on the air and, when the cameras were turned off, invited Glick to leave his studio immediately or, according to some accounts, O’Reilly threatened, “I’ll rip your fucking head off.”
Glick’s father, Barry, a worker at the Port Authority, was among the thousands who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center; O’Reilly was outraged that Glick had signed a newspaper ad criticizing President George W. Bush’s military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You keep your mouth shut,” O’Reilly yelled at Glick at one point, pointing a finger in his face. “You have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country...I hope your mom isn’t watching this...Cut his mike! I’m not gonna dress you down any more.”
The 2004 documentary Outfoxed; Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalismshows how O’Reilly continued to attack Glick, and mischaracterize his views, long after he was ejected from the studio.
Twelve years after his close encounter, Glick told The Daily Beast: “Why would you expect rational, reasonable thinking from someone who doesn’t know the difference between a falafel and a loofa sponge?”—a reference to allegations of sexually charged comments, and apparent confusion on O’Reilly’s part, in an embarrassing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against O’Reilly by one of his female producers. The headline-making suit was settled out of court in October 2004.
During Tuesday’s pity-party on The Factor, O’Reilly and Fox Business Network personality John Stossel, an avowed libertarian, enumerated all the ways in which the liberal media elite had snubbed, dissed and otherwise marginalized them during their pre-Fox decades in network television because they didn’t embrace the left-wing orthodoxy of tougher gun laws, abortion on demand, government regulation, and taxpayer-funded welfare—an attitude which Stossel summed up as “Any civilized person thinks that way, and if you don’t, you’re a cretin, and we’re gonna get you.”
O’Reilly commiserated with his fellow victim: “You know as well as everybody in this building that if you go out and say, ‘I work for Fox News’ at a party or anything like that, you’re gonna get people who hate you, they don’t even know you, just because you work at FNC.”
“Totally,” Stossel agreed. “They’ll just turn around and walk away.”
But lest The Factor’sloyal viewership burst into tears at the unfairness of it all, O’Reilly injected some levity: “Stossel and I have known each other for a very long time, when we covered the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Just a little jest, there, Stossel—you know what I’m talkin’ about?”
I try not to. If he had his own threads with a point I disagreed with I might post once or twice in there to see if an actual conversation between posters could get started. The issue on this board now is his entrance into all threads, not to discuss but to overwhelm with memes and endless articles that turn the thread into a scrollwheel speed contest. What's the strategy, victory by volume?
This is ongoing now, several times per day you can count on Googler bumping 5-7 threads with the same Shit he previously spammed in those same threads. I guess when ones own comments are so trite and repetitious googling and spamming from mother jones is the solution. He and the Engorged Alaskan are no different. Googler will read this post with a bubble over his head that reads, "How else can I bring someone around to my hollow, simplistic view of the world, besides repeating myself ad nauseum and posting bloated articles?" "I know, I'll call him Fixer Boy! HA!!!"
A Repetitive, Continuous Proven Liar not recognizing another one. Fits Perfectly. Hey Lying Ace.
What party was Donald Sterling in?
How many times did Frasier Glenn Miller/Cross run as a Democratic candidate?
Did Vit post in the Poly Forum during the year he lost a bet to not post in the poly forum?
Deeper and Deeper into the spin zone: Just man up and apologize Bull O. Your Clapping Seals and Bleating Sheep will still love you because they're too stupid to think for themselves, and "you're looking out for them".
[h=1]Bill O'Reilly: I Said I Saw Nuns Being Shot Because I Saw Photos Of It[/h]
ByBrendan JamesPublishedFebruary 26, 2015, 3:30 PM EST 14832 views
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Wednesday explained that he previously described seeing nuns "get gunned down" in the 1980s in El Salvador because he had seen photographs of such incidents.
O'Reilly was responding to a report by liberal watchdog Media Matters on Wednesday, which accused the Fox host of saying contradictory things about whether he had witnessed nuns being killed in El Salvador while covering a war in the 1980s.
O'Reilly talked to Mediaite later on Wednesday, saying that what he meant in those statements was that he had seen "images" of nuns being killed, not that he had witnessed them himself.
“While in El Salvador, reporters were shown horrendous images of violence that were never broadcast, including depictions of nuns who were murdered," he told Mediaite.
During a Dec. 14, 2012 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor," O'Reilly talked about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He compared it to something he said he'd seen earlier in his career.
"I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head," O'Reilly said, according to Media Matters.
He explained to Mediaite on Wednesday that he brought up El Salvador while discussing the Sandy Hook shooting to talk about "evil."
"I used the murdered nuns as an example of that evil," O'Reilly told the website. "That’s what I am referring to when I say ‘I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.’ No one could possibly take that segment as reporting on El Salvador.”
Media Matters also pointed to a Sept. 27, 2005 episode of O'Reilly's radio show in which he said, "I've seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador."
O'Reilly did not specifically mention the 2005 quote when speaking to Mediaite.
In his 2001 book, "The No-Spin Zone," as well as in another episode of his TV show, O'Reilly said he did not arrive in the country until 1981, after the reported instances of nuns being murdered, according to Media Matters. (He also reportedly made no reference to seeing anyone killed in his book.)
In a 2009 interview with "Hamptons TV," O'Reilly also seemed to describe arriving in the El Salvador after the nuns were massacred. He described speaking to a priest there while covering the war.
"I was talking to the guy because these nuns had been slaughtered in El Salvador, and I was down there right after that," he says on video. "They shot like a dozen, killed a dozen nuns.
Media Matters wrote that the contradiction exposed a "fabrication."
The report came a day after another Media Matters article alleging that O'Reilly manufactured a story in which he was on the scene during the suicide of a key figure in the investigation of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
A report by Mother Jones earlier this month, questioning O'Reilly's record covering the Falklands War, kicked off these further investigations of the Fox host's past statements and war tales.
[h=1]Bill O'Reilly: I Said I Saw Nuns Being Shot Because I Saw Photos Of It[/h]
ByBrendan JamesPublishedFebruary 26, 2015, 3:30 PM EST 14832 views
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Wednesday explained that he previously described seeing nuns "get gunned down" in the 1980s in El Salvador because he had seen photographs of such incidents.
O'Reilly was responding to a report by liberal watchdog Media Matters on Wednesday, which accused the Fox host of saying contradictory things about whether he had witnessed nuns being killed in El Salvador while covering a war in the 1980s.
O'Reilly talked to Mediaite later on Wednesday, saying that what he meant in those statements was that he had seen "images" of nuns being killed, not that he had witnessed them himself.
“While in El Salvador, reporters were shown horrendous images of violence that were never broadcast, including depictions of nuns who were murdered," he told Mediaite.
During a Dec. 14, 2012 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor," O'Reilly talked about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He compared it to something he said he'd seen earlier in his career.
"I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head," O'Reilly said, according to Media Matters.
He explained to Mediaite on Wednesday that he brought up El Salvador while discussing the Sandy Hook shooting to talk about "evil."
"I used the murdered nuns as an example of that evil," O'Reilly told the website. "That’s what I am referring to when I say ‘I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.’ No one could possibly take that segment as reporting on El Salvador.”
Media Matters also pointed to a Sept. 27, 2005 episode of O'Reilly's radio show in which he said, "I've seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador."
O'Reilly did not specifically mention the 2005 quote when speaking to Mediaite.
In his 2001 book, "The No-Spin Zone," as well as in another episode of his TV show, O'Reilly said he did not arrive in the country until 1981, after the reported instances of nuns being murdered, according to Media Matters. (He also reportedly made no reference to seeing anyone killed in his book.)
In a 2009 interview with "Hamptons TV," O'Reilly also seemed to describe arriving in the El Salvador after the nuns were massacred. He described speaking to a priest there while covering the war.
"I was talking to the guy because these nuns had been slaughtered in El Salvador, and I was down there right after that," he says on video. "They shot like a dozen, killed a dozen nuns.
Media Matters wrote that the contradiction exposed a "fabrication."
The report came a day after another Media Matters article alleging that O'Reilly manufactured a story in which he was on the scene during the suicide of a key figure in the investigation of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
A report by Mother Jones earlier this month, questioning O'Reilly's record covering the Falklands War, kicked off these further investigations of the Fox host's past statements and war tales.
