Bill O’Reilly used the first five minutes of his highly-rated Fox News program on Friday to respond to allegations reported by David Corn at the liberal Mother Jones that O’Reilly had embellished his own professional history as a reporter at CBS News.
O’Reilly produced two letters: A “CBS internal memo from 33 years ago” that praised O’Reilly’s coverage of a protest related to the Falkland War in Buenos Aires, Argentina and a letter he wrote himself to his boss at CBS complimenting the production crew that accompanied him in Buenos Aires.
“Now, I had to spend hours last night on the phone with various reporters,” O’Reilly said, “and crawling around my basement covered with dust to find documents from 33 years ago. Again, it was a miracle I found them.”
Corn reported Thursday, “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 the United Kingdom and Argentina.”
Corn added, “American reporters were not on the ground in this distant war zone.”
After the report was published, O’Reilly spoke with several publications to rebut the story, including the Washington Post, the media news site Mediaite, Politico, the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the conservative news site The Blaze, news blog TV Newser and the New York Daily News tabloid.
In each interview, O’Reilly lashed out at Corn, calling him “a disgusting piece of garbage,” a “smear merchant,” and a “pig.” O’Reilly also maintained that he never misrepresented his record as a reporter, saying he never said he was in the Falkland Islands but that he did cover its developments in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he said there were violent protests. (The Falkland Islands are hundreds of miles off of Argentina.)
For his part, Corn has maintained that his story is accurate and that O’Reilly is trying to “hide behind name calling.”
After defending himself on air, O’Reilly had Geraldo Rivera and Bernard Goldberg, both Fox News employees, on his show to comment. Rivera and Goldberg defended O’Reilly.
