FOX News anchor and famed right-wing commentator Bill O'Reilly was quick to lambast
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams in the wake of "
false reporting" about his experience in the Iraqi war.
Now O'Reilly himself is coming under fire for what appears to be his own tall tale about his reporting in the Falklands war.
On Thursday,
Mother Jones published a thorough takedown of the FOX News anchor's war stories, specifically in his recounting of the 1982 Falklands war between the UK and Argentina. At the time, O'Reilly was a correspondent for CBS News.
While O'Reilly was in Buenos Aires in the midst of protests in the Argentine capital, he never stepped foot on the Falklands during the conflict, nor did any other American correspondent.
During a 2013 interview on FOX News, O'Reilly recounted his experience during the Falklands war, describing himself as being in a "war zone." While O'Reilly does not expressly said he was on the islands, he does repeatedly mention the war zone.
"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. And the army was chasing us," said O'Reilly. "I had to make a decision. And I dragged him off, you know, but at the same time, I'm looking around and trying to do my job, but I figure I had to get this guy out of there because that was more important."
Much of his recounting of the experience glorifies his own actions while denigrating those of other journalists working alongside him at the time. O'Reilly was in Buenos Aires reporting for CBS News during
violent street protests, though it does not appear there were any fatalities, as the FOX anchor has asserted in his retelling.
“There were riots in the streets of Buenos Aires.... and I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS News correspondents were hiding in the hotel," said O'Reilly during a 2009 interview with Hamptons TV's "American Dreams Show."
O'Reilly has responded to the Mother Jones story, calling David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the magazine, a liar.
“[Corn] is a liar, a smear merchant, and will do anything he can to injure me and the network. Everybody knows that. Everything I’ve reported about my journalistic career is true,” said O'Reilly in an
interview with FOX colleague Howard Kurtz. "There is not any way anyone on earth could say I said I was on the Falkland Islands.”
Criticism of O'Reilly appeared to be gaining some momentum, particularly from journalists, including BBC's South America Correspondent Wyre Davies. However the initial reaction was nowhere near the backlash Williams saw in the wake of his recent misreporting.
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I think this whole thing is getting blown out of proportion starting with Williams and getting worse and worse.
If you are a man and you have adventures, the first time you tell a story (that same year) you remember it quite clearly. Then as time progresses you remember less and less of it.
I find that the memories of women are much better generally than the memories of men. Men tend to be more problem solvers so we tend to keep our minds in the present more to solve problems.
Whereas women traditionally for thousands of years were the keepers of the home and all the details of home and food and cooking and finding clothes and making clothes and all that.
Whereas look back through history and most of the time men were asked to solve problems more in the moment like,
"It's flooding what do we do?"
"There are people trying to kill us what do we do?"
"The house is on fire what do we do?"
So, a man is more genetically trained for this kind of thing because all the men who weren't good at this already died along with their families. So, other genetics already died out.
So, the problem now becomes, "What happens to a man over the years?
Does he remember ever detail of everything he ever did?
Usuallly No!
He might not even remember all the names of the women he slept with before he was 25 or 30 and got married.
So, I think if men were women all this problem would make more sense than it presently does.
So, unless a man writes down what he did when he did it and then rereads this as a script, he likely isn't going to remember all the details and this could result in embellishments along the way.
So, in this way most successful men are "Legends in their own minds".
This is just he way it is for those of us who survive everything and live to an old age and are still alive and kicking and okay in our 60 and 70s and hopefully beyond.
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