A very long, well-documented read that is the source for O'Reilly competing with Giuliani as "King Jerk" this week ~ and this one is getting VERY ugly VERY fast ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem
The Fox News host has said he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached.
—By David Corn and Daniel Schulman | Thu Feb. 19, 2015 5:26 PM EST

After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don't withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in.

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. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, "I've been there. That's really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I've seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven't."

Fox News and O'Reilly did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Here are instances when O'Reilly touted his time as a war correspondent during the Falklands conflict:

◾In his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations With the Powerful and Famous in America, O'Reilly stated, "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."
◾Conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, in a 2003 book, described how O'Reilly answered a question during a Washington panel discussion about media coverage of the Afghanistan war: "Rather than simply answer the question, O'Reilly began by trying to establish his own bona fides as a war correspondent. 'I've covered wars, okay? I've been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I've almost been killed three times, okay.'"
◾In a 2004 column about US soldiers fighting in Iraq, O'Reilly noted, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash."
◾In 2008, he took a shot at journalist Bill Moyers, saying, "I missed Moyers in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland. I looked for Bill, but I didn't see him."


In April 2013, while discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, O'Reilly shared a heroic tale of his exploits in the Falklands war:



Yet his own account of his time in Argentina in his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone, contains no references to O'Reilly experiencing or covering any combat during the Falklands war. In the book, which in part chronicles his troubled stint as a CBS News reporter, O'Reilly reports that he arrived in Buenos Aires soon before the Argentine junta surrendered to the British, ending the 10-week war over control of two territories far off the coast of Argentina. There is nothing in this memoir indicating that O'Reilly witnessed the fighting between British and Argentine military forces—or that he got anywhere close to the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off Argentina's shore and about 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires.

Given the remote location of the war zone—which included the British territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, more than 1,400 miles offshore—few reporters were able to witness and report on the combat that claimed the lives of about 900 Argentine and British troops. The government in London only allowed about 30 British journalists to accompany its military forces. As Caroline Wyatt, the BBC's defense correspondent, recently noted, "It was a war in which a small group of correspondents and crews sailing with the Royal Navy were almost entirely dependent upon the military—not only for access to the conflict, but also for the means of reporting it back to the UK." And Robert Fox, one of the embedded British reporters, recalled, "We were, in all, a party of about 32-34 accredited journalists, photographers, television crew members. We were all white, male, and British. There was no embedded reporter from Europe, the Commonwealth or the US (though they tried hard enough), let alone from Latin America."

American reporters were not on the ground in this distant war zone. "Nobody got to the war zone during the Falklands war," Susan Zirinsky, a longtime CBS News producer who helped manage the network's coverage of the war from Buenos Aires, tells Mother Jones. She does not remember what O'Reilly did during his time in Argentina. But she notes that the military junta kept US reporters from reaching the islands: "You weren't allowed on by the Argentinians. No CBS person got there."

That's how Bob Schieffer, who was CBS News' lead correspondent covering the Falklands war, recalls it: "Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands. I came close. We'd been trying to get somebody down there. It was impossible." He notes that NBC News reporter Robin Lloyd was the only American network correspondent to reach the islands. "I remember because I got my butt scooped on that," Schieffer says. "He got out there and we were all trying to get there." (Lloyd tells Mother Jones that he managed to convince the Argentine military to let him visit Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, but he spent only a day there—and this was weeks before the British forces arrived and the fighting began.)

Schieffer adds, "For us, you were a thousand miles from where the fighting was. So we had some great meals."

O'Reilly did see some action in Argentina—just not war action. He writes in The No Spin Zone that shortly after he hit Buenos Aires—where CBS News had set up a large bureau in the Sheraton hotel—thousands of Argentines took to the streets, angry at the military junta for having yielded to the Brits.

As he tells it in his book, O'Reilly, then 32 years old, raced to cover the event: "A major riot ensued and many were killed. I was right in the middle of it and nearly died of a heart attack when a soldier, standing about ten feet away, pointed his automatic weapon directly at my head." A television cameraman was trampled, journalists were banged up, and O'Reilly and others were teargassed. "After a couple of hours of this pandemonium," he recalls, "I managed to make it back to the Sheraton with the best news footage I have ever seen. This was major violence up close and personal, and it was an important international story."

The rest of the book's section on this episode is a resentful recounting of how O'Reilly was "big-footed" when CBS used his best-ever footage in a news report that featured Schieffer, not him. "I got the hell out of Argentina fast, landed in Miami, and raised a major ruckus at the CBS offices there," O'Reilly writes. Soon he "parted company" with CBS and took an anchor/reporter job in Boston. Schieffer notes that he and other CBS reporters also covered the protest, and that per common practice, all the footage gathered that day was pooled together for the report filed by the Buenos Aires bureau.

O'Reilly's account of the protest in Buenos Aires is at odds with news reports from the time—including the report from his own bureau. The CBS Evening News that night aired about a minute of video of the protest, apparently including some of the footage that O'Reilly and his camera team had obtained. It showed angry Argentines yelling and denouncing the junta that had lost the war. The only act of violence in the spot was a man throwing a punch against the car of a Canadian news crew. On the segment, Schieffer reported, "There were arrests throughout the day. The police threatened to use tear gas at one point. Several North American television crews were jostled…An ABC camera team's car was stoned before the crew escaped." The CBS report said nothing about people being killed. It does not match O'Reilly's dramatic characterization of the event in his book; the video on the broadcast did not depict "major violence up close and personal."


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. The New York Times noted, "Several demonstrators were reported to have been injured, along with at least two reporters."

During a 2009 interview with a television station in the Hamptons, O'Reilly talked about reporting on the Buenos Aires protest, which he claimed other CBS journalists were too fearful to cover: "I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS news correspondents were hiding in the hotel." ("We were all out with our camera crews that day to cover the protest," Schieffer says. "I'd been out there with a crew too.")

O'Reilly noted that soldiers "were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the streets" with "real bullets." And he told of rescuing his South American cameraman, who had been trampled by the crowd: "The camera went flying. I saved the tape because it was unbelievable tape. But I dragged him off the street because he was bleeding from the ear and had hit his head on the concrete…The sound man is trying to save the camera…And then the army comes running down and the guy points the M-16. And I'm going, 'Periodista, no dispare,' which means, 'Journalist, don't shoot.' And I said, 'Por favor.' Please don't shoot…Then the guy lowered his gun and went away."


The protest in Buenos Aires was not combat. Nor was it part of the Falklands war. It happened more than a thousand miles from the war—after the fighting was over. Yet O'Reilly has referred to his work in Argentina—and his rescue of his cameraman—as occurring in a "war zone." And he once told a viewer who caught his show in Argentina, "Tell everybody down there I covered the Falklands war. They'll remember."


O'Reilly has frequently represented himself as a combat-hardened journalist—he has visited US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and reported from those countries—and he has referred to his assignment in Argentina to bolster this impression. On his television show in 1999, O'Reilly responded to a letter from a retired Air Force colonel, who said he had flown 123 missions over Vietnam and who criticized O'Reilly for supporting military action in Kosovo, by citing his Falklands war days: "Hey, Colonel, did you ever have a hostile point an M-16 at your head from 10 yards away? That happened to me while I was covering the Falklands war." In his 2013 book Keep It Pithy, he writes, "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America." During his radio show on January 13, 2005, he declared, "I've been in combat. I've seen it. I've been close to it." When a caller questioned him about this, O’Reilly shot back: "I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America." O'Reilly did not specify where these firefights occurred—in The No Spin Zone, the only South America assignment he writes about is his trip to Argentina—and then he hung up on the caller.

In The No Spin Zone, O'Reilly does write vividly about an assignment that took him to El Salvador during the country's civil war shortly after CBS News hired him as a correspondent in 1981. As O'Reilly recalls in the book, he and his crew drove for a full day to reach Morazán province, "a dangerous place," and headed to a small village called Meanguera, where, a Salvadoran captain claimed, guerrillas had wiped out the town. "Nobody in his right mind would go into the guerilla-controlled area," O'Reilly writes. But he did, and he notes he found a horrific scene: "The place was leveled to the ground and fires were still smoldering. But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead. There was absolutely nobody around who could tell us what happened. I quickly did a stand-up amid the rubble and we got the hell out of there." He does not mention being in any firefight.

O'Reilly's account of his El Salvador mission is inconsistent with the report he filed for CBS News, which aired on May 20, 1982—shortly before he was dispatched to Buenos Aires. "These days Salvadoran soldiers appear to be doing more singing than fighting," O'Reilly said in the opening narration, pointing out that not much combat was under way in the country at that time. O'Reilly noted that the defense ministry claimed it had succeeded in "scattering the rebel forces, leaving government troops in control of most of the country." He reported that a military helicopter had taken him and his crew on a tour of areas formerly held by the rebels. (This fact was not included in the account in The No Spin Zone.) From the air, O'Reilly and his team saw houses destroyed and dead animals "but no signs of insurgent forces."

As part of the same 90-second story, O'Reilly reported from Meanguera, saying rebels had been driven out of the hamlet by the Salvadoran military after intense fighting. But this was not a wiped-out village of the dead. His own footage, which was recently posted by The Nation, showed residents walking about and only one or two burned-down structures. O'Reilly's CBS report gave no indication that he had experienced any combat on this assignment in El Salvador.


When O'Reilly was excoriating Brian Williams last week for telling a war-related whopper, he said of his Fox television show, "We've made some mistakes in the past but very few…We take great pains to present you with information that can be verified." And he asserted, "Reporting comes with a big responsibility, the Founding Fathers made that point very clearly. They said to us, 'We'll give you freedom. We'll protect you from government intrusion. But, in return, you, the press, must be honest.'"

Research assistance: Sam Brodey

*Sharp-eyed readers have pointed out that it is more accurate to say that the UK, not England, was at war with Argentina. The sentence has been changed.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/bill-oreilly-brian-williams-falklands-war

Makes no never mind. O'Reilly's universe doesn't include integrity.

*Sharp-eyed readers have pointed out that it is more accurate to say that the UK, not England, was at war with Argentina

True enough, but they need to be sharper eyed!

I was in a situation one time, in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands,


The Falklands weren't "in Argentina". The Argentinians claimed it, and sent in a force to occupy it, but it was, and remains, a British Overseas Territory.

And I don't think Northern Ireland was ever regarded as a "war zone".

So you can add ignorance to mendacity.

To me, a lie is a lie is a lie ~ and the only "measure" of a lie to me is if/when/how it affects others ~ but I also confess I'm enjoying watching this arrogant ass being take down a few pegs ~ Sooz

O’Reilly mocked on Facebook by former colleague for covering war from ‘expense account zone’
Tom Boggioni | 21 Feb 2015 at 22:54 ET

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who has been taking fire for the past few days over questions of whether he fabricated wartime experiences while covering the Falklands war in 1982, took another shot when a former CBS colleague mocked him on Facebook, saying the bombastic journalist was never in a “combat situation.”

On his Facebook page, retired CBS correspondent, Eric Jo Engberg wrote: “We — meaning the American networks — 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. It was an ‘expense account zone’.”

Allegations that O’Reilly exaggerated or fabricated his wartime coverage arose after he attacked NBC news anchor Brian Williams who was suspended by his network over multiple instances of falsely recounting events he claimed he took part in.

On Thursday, Mother Jones reported that O’Reilly has repeatedly spoken about living through “combat situations” while covering the brief war between Argentina and the United Kingdom. According to Mother Jones, O’Reilly never actually did any combat reporting, spending his time in hotels in Buenos Aries.

O’Reilly has used his wartime experiences to establish his credibility, saying, “I’ve been there. That’s really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I’ve seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven’t.”

O’Reilly’s credibility took another hit with Enberg’s Facebook post.

“We were in Buenos Aires because that’s the only place the Argentine military junta would let journalists go,” Enberg wrote. “Our knowledge of the war was restricted to what we could glean from comically deceitful daily briefings given by the Argentine military and watching government-controlled television to try to pick up a useful clue from propaganda broadcasts.”

According to Engberg, the closest O’Reilly got to any conflicts were protests in the streets near Argentina’s Presidential Palace, which Enberg described as “Mostly chanting, fist-shaking and throwing coins at the uniformed soldiers who were assembled outside the palace.”

Engberg took issue with O’Reilly’s boastful claim about covering the protests, “I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS News correspondents were hiding in the hotel.”

“If he said such thing it is an absolute lie,” Engberg wrote. “Everyone was working in the street that night, the crews exhibiting their usual courage. O’Reilly was the one person who behaved unprofessionally and without regard for the safety of the camera crew he was leading.”

Engberg concluded, “I don’t think it’s as big a lie as Brian Williams told because O’Reilly hasn’t falsely claimed to be the target of an enemy attack, but he has displayed a willingness to twist the truth in a way that seeks to invent a battlefield that did not exist. And he ought to be subject to the same scrutiny Williams faced. He also ought to be ashamed of himself.”

A Fox spokesperson sent out an email Saturday stating that O’Reilly will address Engberg’s comments when he appears on Fox’s own Media Buzz show, Sunday morning with host Howard Kurtz.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/oreilly-mocked-on-facebook-by-former-colleague-for-covering-war-from-expense-account-zone/

Next thing ya know, we'll be finding out that many of the reporters in the last couple of decades, in the ME, really reported from in front of a green screen while images played behind them.

I've always thought that reporters in a war zone are crazy. Just like the ones in a hurricane or a tornado. In a war zone, they can become a liability to the troops too.

IMO, embedded "reporters" lose their credibility and become propagandists.

i would be astonished if this brought O'Reilly down.

I don't see it bringing him down either, mac ~ but he's a [ludicrously] peacock-y man who cannot/will not tolerate the ridicule being heaped on him ~ and he works for Fox, which promotes and rewards dishonesty and manipulation ~

Sooz

Next thing we'll hear is O'Reilly screaming that these "colleagues are all in cahoots out of jealousy" ~ ~ and who [other than O'Reilly] uses a fictional book he authored to claim his own "honesty"? ~ ~ there are some "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

TPM LIVEWIRE
Another CBS Colleague Calls Out Bill O'Reilly's War-Zone Claims: 'Absurd'
By Brendan James Published February 23, 2015, 12:04 PM EST

Another former colleague of Bill O'Reilly has spoken out following allegations that the Fox host embellished his experiences covering the Falklands war for CBS in the 1980s.

Former CBS reporter Charles Krause called O'Reilly's claims "absurd" in an interview with Media Matters published on Monday.

"I don't recall him doing any major story that anybody remembers and he was there a very short time," Krause said, "then he was recalled, I don't know why."

Krause said he could not remember any proof of O'Reilly's claim that he saved a cameraman while being chased by the Argentinian army during a protest in Buenos Aires, nor did he agree with calling the protests "riots."

He also called O'Reilly's general characterization of the demonstrations "absurd."

"That's absurd because Buenos Aires was Buenos Aires," Krause told Media Matters. "It was just like it always was, there was very little evidence of the war in Buenos Aires. The war was being fought thousands of miles away."

"He wasn't a team player and people thought he was grandstanding, basically," Krause said.

On Sunday, another former CBS correspondent, Eric Engberg, similarly dismissed O'Reilly's description of the protests in Buenos Aires to CNN's Brian Stelter, and took issue with O'Reilly's attitude.

Engberg became noticeably agitated when CNN showed a clip in which O'Reilly said all his CBS colleagues were hiding in their hotel rooms the night of the protests.

"What he just said is a fabrication, a lie," Engberg said.

CNN also reported that seven other former CBS colleagues have disputed O'Reilly's repeated accounts of the protests in Buenos Aires.

Last week Mother Jones magazine surfaced doubts about O'Reilly's war stories, noting that no major media outlets at the time reported any of the violence that the Fox News host described in several books and interviews.

O'Reilly defended himself during Friday's episode of "The O'Reilly Factor," calling Mother Jones a "bottom-rung" publication with "low circulation." The Fox host has also said he expects the article's author, David Corn, "to be in the kill zone. Where he deserves to be." The magazine's editors have demanded an apology for the "kill zone" comment.

O'Reilly has also referred to his novel, "Those Who Trespass," as an account of his experience covering the Falklands.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-oreilly-charles-krause-falklands

I don't have much respect for his colleagues who have known all along that O'Relly's a liar.
They are speaking out now that it's safe to pile on.

No surprise here ~ but this is why we can't have nice things ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

TPM LIVEWIRE
Fox News: Chief Roger Ailes Is In 'Full Support Of Bill O'Reilly'
By Brendan James Published February 23, 2015, 2:08 PM EST

A spokesperson for the Fox News Channel said in an article published Sunday that the channel's head Roger Ailes is giving "full support" to Bill O'Reilly after several former colleagues have come forward questioning the host's war stories.

“Fox News Chairman and C.E.O. Roger Ailes and all senior management are in full support of Bill O’Reilly,” a spokeswoman told the New York Times in a statement.

For his part, O'Reilly has been aggressively defending his previous statements about covering the Falklands War for CBS in the 1980s after an article by Mother Jones last week questioned his accounts.

At least seven former colleagues of O'Reilly's at CBS have given interviews stating they do not recognize the Fox host's descriptions of his time covering the war.

The former CBS journalists echoed Mother Jones' skepticism of O'Reilly's occasional claim to have "been there" in the Falklands (he was in Buenos Aires), his description of a violent "riot" in the capital city, and his claim to have rescued a cameraman from danger.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-oreilly-roger-ailes-support-falklands

Nothing is going to happen to O'Reilly. He never had integrity to begin with so he just got caught doing what he does all the time.

Ailes is a chicken hawk. why should he even care?

Let's assume for a moment that Buenos Aires could be considered part of the war zone during the Falklands War. (I suppose that means London was part of it, too.) Further, let us suppose that covering a riot during that war qualifies the reporter as reporting from a war zone.

The one really, really major qualifier missing from even O'Reilly's narrative of events is that there was no war at the time. Argentina had already surrendered. How could he be a war correspondent when there was no war?

To Bill O'Reilly, that's all just "pesky details", jim ~

Sooz

This isn't going away anytime soon ~ and Fox is reveling in all the attention ~ ~ Sooz

The Proofiness of Bill O'Reilly
Trying to back up his wartime reporting claims, O'Reilly selectively quotes the New York Times—but the Times reporter refutes him.
—By David Corn | Mon Feb. 23, 2015 12:08 PM EST

Last week, after Mother Jones published an article by Daniel Schulman and me reporting on Bill O'Reilly's mischaracterizations of his wartime reporting experience, the Fox News host replied with insult, denial, threatening rhetoric, and bombast.

Insult: He called me a "liar," a "despicable guttersnipe," and "garbage."

Denial: Though the story included video of O'Reilly stating he had been "in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands," O'Reilly insisted, "I never said I was on the [Falklands] island, ever."

Threatening rhetoric: In one of his many comments to other reporters (while continuing to ignore the questions we sent him before publication), O'Reilly declared that I deserve "to be in the kill zone."

Bombast: O'Reilly proclaimed, "Everything I said about my reportorial career—EVERYTHING—is accurate."

And that was just in the first 24 hours. Eventually, O'Reilly added another element to his arsenal: proofiness.

After nearly a day of hurling invective, O'Reilly opened his cable show Friday night with a monologue that assailed me as a smear-meister. But he also tried to win the day by producing documents that, he asserted, showed how he had been unfairly tarred. "In what I consider to be a miracle," he declared, "I found this CBS internal memo from 33 years ago praising my coverage" of a protest in Buenos Aires that happened just as the 1982 Falklands war ended.

Our article had pointed out that O'Reilly's later accounts of this protest—which he called a "combat situation"—contained significant contradictions with the factual record. He has claimed that soldiers fired into the crowd, that "many" people were killed, and that "I was out there pretty much by myself because the other CBS correspondents were hiding in the hotel." (The Mother Jones article said nothing about how O'Reilly covered the protest at the time.)

Yet O'Reilly's dramatic account is disputed by media reports of the time and by other journalists who were there—including, CNN reported Sunday, seven CBS staffers who were in Buenos Aires at the time. (Former CBS News veteran Eric Engberg posted a particularly scathing recollection of O'Reilly's short stint in Buenos Aires as a CBS News correspondent.)

So what did the "miracle" memo say? It apparently was from the CBS news desk in New York City, and the note expressed "thanks for a fine piece." It showed, in other words, that O'Reilly covered the protest—which no one disputed—and it addressed none of the issues in question.

But wait, O'Reilly found another document in his basement—a letter he sent to a CBS News executive: "The crews were great…The riot had been very bad, we were gassed, shot at, and I had the best vantage point in which to report the story." Again, the document showed what no one had disputed—that the protest turned ugly, and that police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowd—but it provided no information backing up O'Reilly's claim that soldiers gunned down civilians and "many" were killed.

"We have rock solid proof that David Corn smeared me," O'Reilly concluded. Not really.

On Sunday, O'Reilly, speaking by phone, was a guest on Fox News' MediaBuzz, which is hosted by the network's in-house media reporter, Howard Kurtz, and he brandished a new piece of proof: a New York Times article. The story, by Richard Meislin, chronicled the protest, and O'Reilly read several paragraphs that described the violence in Buenos Aires. We cited this article in our story, and it does not say anything about soldiers shooting into the crowd, or anyone being killed. Its only reference to police or military violence is this one line: "One policeman pulled a pistol, firing five shots over the heads of fleeing demonstrators." Nothing in the story matches O'Reilly's description of soldiers mowing down protesters. (The Times dispatch did say, "Local news agencies said three buses had been set ablaze by demonstrators and another one fired upon." It did not attribute those shots to soldiers or police, and the sentence suggests this violence was committed by protesters.)

But here's the tell: As O'Reilly read from the Times story, when he reached the line about a cop "firing five shots," he omitted the rest of the sentence: "over the heads of the fleeing demonstrators." He jumped straight to the next sentence, hoodwinking the audience, for with this selective quotation, he had conveyed the impression that at least one cop had been firing on the protesters. He had adulterated his supposed proof.

Later in the show, Kurtz gently asked O'Reilly, "You've have said you covered a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War, you said the war zones of the Falkland conflict in Argentina. Looking back, do you wish you had worded it differently?" O'Reilly replied:


Only that is not what the New York Times reported. O'Reilly was citing an article that disproved his point to prove his point.

And the reporter of that Times story, Richard Meislin, weighed in after the show to say O'Reilly had misled the audience about this article. On Facebook, Meislin wrote:


There may be more proofiness to come. During Kurtz's show, O'Reilly announced that on his Monday night show he expected to air the footage that he and his crew gathered during the Buenos Aires protest. If he does, there's no doubt the video will present a protest that turned ugly. (Our article included video from the CBS News report on the protest—which did feature some of the footage that O'Reilly and his camera crew obtained—and that entire segment showed no troops or police firing on the protesters and slaughtering Argentines.) But unless the video O'Reilly presents on his program shows soldiers shooting into the crowd and massacring civilians, it will not likely bolster O'Reilly's case.

That doesn't mean he won't cite it as proof he's been wronged. That's how proofiness works. The assertion is more important than the evidence itself.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/bill-oreilly-proofiness-falklands-new-york-times-meislin

This is out-of-sync date-wise since I'm cleaning out my "saved to read/maybe post later" file, which is overflowing ~ this is a solid commentary that supports the "methinks he protests too much" adage ~ ~ Sooz

THE NO SPIN ZONE
February 20, 2015 11:19 am
Bill O’Reilly Goes into a Rage after His War Reporting Is Questioned
A new investigation suggests O'Reilly exaggerated his stories of combat reporting.
by Kia Makarechi

One way to set Fox News host Bill O’Reilly off: suggest that his reporting during the Falklands war was exaggerated. After Mother Jones published a lengthy, accusatory look into his coverage of the 1982 conflict for CBS News, O’Reilly responded by going on something of a media tour, granting interviews to CNN, Deadline, The Washington Post, Fox, and Politico.

In those interviews, he called the MoJo report, by David Corn and Daniel Schulman, “a total hit piece”, “a piece of garbage” by a “guttersnipe”, and “a lie”.

What, exactly, did Corn and Schulman report? The Mother Jones journalists wrote that O’Reilly exaggerated the danger he was in while reporting from Argentina. O’Reilly was based there as a journalist for CBS, and referred to his experiences from “El Salvador to the Falklands” as time in an “active war zone” in his book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America. (MoJo has a lengthy rundown of O’Reilly’s characterizations of his reporting from the conflict.)

The only problem, to hear Corn and Schulman tell it, is that no American reporter appears to actually have made it to combat zones within the Falkland Islands, which are 1,200 miles south of Buenos Aires. Correspondents who made it there said only approximately 30 reporters were embedded with British troops, and that all of them were British. CBS’s Bob Schieffer, who was also in Argentina at the time, said the team was “a thousand miles from where the fighting was.”

O’Reilly told The Washington Post that the MoJo report is an exercise in semantics. He claims his references to covering combat during the Falklands war encapsulate his reporting on protests that happened in Buenos Aires. “We were sent down there to cover the Falklands war,” he told the Post’s Erik Wemple. “How else am I supposed to label it? And when you have people shooting guns, that’s combat. There isn’t any distinction to be made because I’ve never said that I was on the islands or that there was any action in that capacity.”

Corn and Schulman claim that O’Reilly exaggerated the scene at the protests, as well. O’Reilly wrote in his book that “many were killed,” though a survey of reporting from the time appears to suggest that skirmishes between Argentinians and riot police resulted in the deployment of tear gas and nightsticks, not mass casualties.

The Fox News host had previously defended Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor who is now serving a six-month suspension after it was revealed that he conflated stories and exaggerated his proximity to harm while reporting from Iraq. Though O’Reilly did frame Williams’s distortions as indictments of the general liberal media, he also took the anchor’s side in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. O’Reilly characterized Williams’s detractors as vicious warriors on the “cesspool” that is the Internet.

After being accused of having his own “Brian Williams problem,” O’Reilly pointed to the fact that Corn also works at MSNBC, a competitor of Fox News, as the motive for what he told Deadline was “a bunch of garbage.”

“We’re killing them in the ratings,” O’Reilly said of MSNBC. “We’re taking millions of dollars away from them; any damage they can do to me damages the Fox News Channel. Damage the tentpole, damage the main guy—everybody knows this.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/02/bill-oreilly-falklands-war-reporting

He doesn't get it. His ego won't allow it.

Exactly, oskar ~ and O'Reilly will not/canNOT let it go ~ he's a textbook "narcissist" ~

Sooz

Rachel nails this ~ ~ Sooz

The Rachel Maddow Show 2/25/15
Bill O'Reilly threats against reporters indefensible

Rachel Maddow excoriates Bill O'Reilly and Fox News for taking his bombast to the point of directly threatening reporters for reporting, and highlights the recent series of revelations about uncorrected false claims O'Reilly has made on Fox News.


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/bill-oreilly-reporter-threats-indefensible-404595779908?cid=eml_mra_20150226

O'Reilly has had a long career ~ no telling how much more will be unearthed ~ there are some "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Three Apparent Whoppers Bill O'Reilly Has Told About His Career
The Fox blowhard has a, shall we say, shaky relationship with the truth.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet / February 27, 2015

Bill O'Reilly is consistently the most-watched opinion news pundit. But despite bringing in enormous ratings, O'Reilly has gotten himself into a bit of trouble as it appears that he has, on several occasions, blatantly lied about his reporting history.

Here's the three big whoppers uncovered so far:

1. Bill O'Reilly Lied About How He Covered The Falklands War: O'Reilly has claimed that he “reported on the ground in active war zones [like] the Falklands...having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war, I know that life-and-death decisions are made in a flash.” The reality is that O'Reilly, while working for CBS News, covered a protest in Buenos Aires, over a thousand miles away from the fighting over the Falklands.

2. Bill O'Reilly Lied About Witnessing The Suicide Of A Man In The JFK Investigation: O'Reilly has on numerous occasions said he witnessed the suicide of George de Mohrenschildt, who knew the JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. It's now apparent that O'Reilly actually called a congressional investigator to confirm the suicide – meaning he didn't witness it himself.

3. Bill O'Reilly Lied About Witnessing The Murder Of Salvadoran Nuns: O'Reilly claimed he saw nuns executed in El Salvador; after being called on the claim, he now says he merely saw photographs of the execution. Additionally, O'Reilly stands accused as intentionally failing to cover massacres during the war.

The researchers at Media Matters are working around the clock to discover more fibs from O'Reilly's past. If three major whoppers have emerged in less than three weeks, it's likely we haven't seen the last of the Fox News anchor's lies.

http://www.alternet.org/media/three-apparent-whoppers-bill-oreilly-has-told-about-his-career

99 times Bill O'Reilly lied to America
By Patrick Howell O'Neill


Isn’t it a little strange that Bill O’Reilly is suffering a scandal for lying?

The growing list of charges against him appear to be true, of course. But he’s been getting key facts wrong on air for decades, a trend his critics have closely tracked for much of his career. The falsehoods haven’t merely been tolerated by Fox News; O’Reilly has been elevated to the most iconic figure the network has ever produced—that he brings in $100 million in ads doesn’t hurt.

The scandal is strange not because he's yet to be shamed off the air, but because he’s sinking into hot water for doing what he’s always done.

Coming so quickly after Brian Williams lost his NBC anchor job for his own falsehood about war-time experience, the timing for this new wave of scandals is pretty bad for O’Reilly. Blood in the water, new charges of lying haven’t been refuted so much as they’ve been met with more lies.

For a journalist, that’s a damning indictment.

But O’Reilly transcends mere journalism, as made evident by the fact that he hasn’t received the slightest slap on the wrist for this ongoing series of transgressions. He’s a commentator, an entertainer, and a world-class rage salesman who has a mile-long history of professional wrongs.

This isn’t a vague criticism; it’s provable by looking at objective fact and comparing it to O’Reilly’s words. In fact, outlets like Media Matters have made a full time job out of catching as many lies as they can.

Here, we report 99 falsehoods from Bill O’Reilly (not an exhaustive list). You decide what was a lie and what is merely a tendency to shout and repeat things when corrected. O’Reilly is a pro at both.
1)
O’Reilly bragged repeatedly he won two Peabody Awards hosting Inside Edition in the 90s. He won zero.

2)
O’Reilly bragged that, woops, he actually had won a Polk Award hosting Inside Edition. He won zero of those, too. To be specific, the show did win that award—a year after O’Reilly stopped hosting.

3)
O’Reilly then said he never claimed to have won a Peabody Award. He actually did make that claim, repeatedly, using the award as proof that Inside Edition was not a tabloid show but very good journalism. He later admitted to making the original Peabody claim, but now he just says the Peabody guys are unfair liberals.

4)
Repeatedly claiming he’s “an average guy,” O’Reilly has claimed that he “came from nothing” and “you don’t come from any lower than I came from on the economic scale.” Actually, O’Reilly’s mother has repeatedly talked to the press about regular vacations the family took to Florida, that O’Reilly went to private school and college, and that they lived in an affluent New York suburb.

5)
In 2006, O’Reilly boasted that he gets 6 million viewers every night. He got 2 million then. Today, he’s posting “huge numbers” because he’s addressing the Argentina controversy—so he’s getting about 3 million viewers on a night.

6)
Responding to critics who say Fox News is too conservative, O’Reilly has long claimed to be a “normal guy” and a registered independent. It turned out, contradicting that claim, that he was a registered Republican.

7)
He insisted that he is really an Independent and that when he registered to vote in 1994, there was no independent option and that he was “somehow assigned Republican status.” In 2004, comedian (now a senator) Al Franken went back and looked at O’Reilly’s voter registration form. Actually, there was an Independent option right next to the Republican box. O’Reilly had chosen Republican and then lied about it for the next decade on television.

8)
NPR’s Mike Pesca reported O’Reilly’s political registration in 2001 on the radio. O’Reilly called it a “hatchet job” and said, “I’ve never heard of Mike Pesca.” Pesca had interviewed O’Reilly on tape for an hour for the report.

9)
In 2004, O’Reilly said Iraq was producing chemical weapons in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war. They were not.

10)
O’Reilly said Al Qaeda was working with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq even after the claims were widely disproven. They were not.

11)
Early in the Iraq war, O’Reilly started a boycott of French goods in protest of the lack of French support for the war. In April 2004, O’Reilly said “they've lost billions of dollars in France according to the Paris Business Review." Such a publication doesn’t exist, first of all, and trade between the U.S. and France actually increased in the time between the war’s beginning and that statement. O’Reilly continued to brag about that “successful” boycott for years afterwards.

12)
In an attempt to explain European opposition to the Iraq war, he said European media—the U.K., in particular—consists of state-controlled organizations led by liberal governments that deliver anti-American “propaganda.” In the U.K., meanwhile, the BBC was struck hard by controversy because they published reports embellishing the threat Iraq posed that misleadingly promoted the war—the same errant tale championed by the Bush administration. The chairman resigned.

13)
O’Reilly claimed that former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wanted to pull out of Iraq “immediately” in 2004. Actually, Dean said, “I think it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the long run. Now that we’re there, we’re stuck there, and the [Bush] administration has no plan for how to deal with it, and we cannot leave because losing the peace is not an option. We cannot leave Iraq.”

14)
O’Reilly claimed President Bush never said “mission accomplished” regarding the Iraq war. Bush said that in 2003, never mind standing in front of an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier for a world-class photo op.

15)
O’Reilly claimed the Iraq war was France’s fault because the country never pushed for weapons inspections. In fact, they did.

16)
O’Reilly said the Dixie Chicks had “never recovered” from the protests that followed their famous criticism of George Bush over the Iraq War. Meanwhile, they had the top-selling album in the country, the top-selling tour in the country, and won a Grammy.

17)
In 2005, O’Reilly said “the secular progressive movement would like to have marriage abolished … that's what this gay marriage thing is all about.” While it was clear even back then that this was a lie about the marriage equality movement, with broader legalization we can now look to 252,000 same-sex married couples as even clearer proof that marriage equality has always been about equality and not abolishment.

18)
O’Reilly claimed that gay marriage killed straight marriage, particularly pointing to heterosexual marriage rates falling in Sweden after same-sex marriage was allowed in 1995. Actually, Swedish marriage rates rose following the passing of the law. Marriage rates are falling in the U.S., but it’s been dropping since well before any gay marriage law was passed in America.

19)
O’Reilly said that, legally, gay marriage makes polygamy legal. After over 252,000 same sex marriages in the U.S., we’re still waiting on the man with “27 wives” O’Reilly talked about.

20)
When O’Reilly was accused of stoking hatred that led to Dr. George Tiller’s murder by an anti-abortion activist, O’Reilly said he never called Tiller a “baby killer.” He did, repeatedly.

21)
He said the reason “many, many, many” of the Hurricane Katrina victims didn’t leave New Orleans before the storm was because they’re “drug addicted” and “thugs” who wouldn’t leave without a fix. Actually, many victims were poor and owned no vehicles. Reasons for staying vary, but drug addiction was never a significant contributor.

22)
He said no one on Fox News ever claimed Obamacare would send people to jail for not paying health coverage bills. They did.

23)
O’Reilly claimed Obama never ordered the military to assist during attacks on Benghazi. Obama did.

24)
In a 2014 interview, Obama said that people believe verifiably false conspiracy theories about Benghazi because “folks like you [O’Reilly] are telling them that.” O’Reilly denied it—but, of course, he pushed the conspiratorial narrative.

25)
He claimed poverty has gone up in the last half century despite the federal government spending “trillions” on “social engineering.” Wrong—poverty is down.

26)
He said “the only reason to use marijuana is to get high.” Actually, it’s used for medical purposes in much of the United States. Marijuana helps to subdue pain for arthritis sufferers, for instance, or stop seizures in other individuals, including children.

27)
Annoyed with legalization in Colorado, O'Reilly claimed the Denver Post “actually hired an editor to promote pot.” They hired an editor to report, not promote.

28)
O'Reilly claimed no one but Fox News covered White House Communications Director Anita Dunn saying Mao Zedong was one of her favorite political philosophers. Lots of other media covered it, though perhaps not as hungrily as he would have liked.

29)
He claimed Obama failed to prosecute an easy voter-intimidation criminal case against the the New Black Panther Party because they didn’t want to charge minorities with violating civil rights. Actually, the Bush administration did that.

30)
O'Reilly lies about taxes a lot. In an argument about taxes on the rich being too high, he said tax rates in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles were much higher than what they actually were.

31)
He said France and Germany taxed citizens at 80 percent. Actually, that’s double the tax rate.

32)
In the lead up to the 2004 election, O’Reilly claimed the U.S. exported more goods than it imported “because everybody wants our stuff, and we're not wild about snails.” That’s another snipe at France. In fact, we had a trade deficit, including with France.

33)
O’Reilly made up a quote saying that liberal financier George Soros wanted his elderly father dead. Actually, Soros didn’t say that.

34)
He claimed Democrats lost voters in the 2004 presidential election over its gains in 2000. Actually, Democrats gained 5 million voters.

35)
O’Reilly claimed Bush won the 2004 election because Independents chose the Republican. Actually, Independents voted Democrat.

36)
He claimed the Bush tax cuts didn’t create a budget deficit, and that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the real reason behind the budget issues. Actually, Bush hit a deficit before 9/11 or any war began.

37)
O'Reilly claimed that Hillary Clinton didn’t go to a single funeral or memorial service of a 9/11 victim. Not true. Further, as senator of New York at the time, Clinton took on the causes of first responders and won the endorsement of two NYC firefighters unions for her support.

38)
O’Reilly said that illegal immigrants were “biological weapons” that killed more people than 9/11. Shortly thereafter, he claimed he never said that.

39)
Talking about Fox’s biases, O’Reilly said, “There is no talking points. There is no marching order. It doesn't exist." Go watch Outfoxed.

40)
He said Fox News has more liberals than conservatives on air. Well, that flies in the face of common sense—and this study from around the same time O’Reilly made that assertion. Newer studies aren’t much kinder.

41)
One of O’Reilly’s signature moments was screaming at the son of a 9/11 victim on air and then repeatedly claiming the son, Jeremy Glick, was a 9/11 truther who blamed America for the attacks. In fact, Glick said he believed that American support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s laid the groundwork for Al Qaeda. There’s a difference, and Glick was right.

42)
O’Reilly said Bush didn’t oppose the creation of the 9/11 commission. He did.

43)
O’Reilly likes to say there is a War on Christmas. To support that, he claimed red and green clothes—Christmas colors—had been banned by a public school in Texas run by “fascism.” That was not true.

44)
Talking about the War on Christmas, O’Reilly claimed Circuit City was owned by Indians. It was never owned by Indians.

45)
Did someone say War on Christmas? O’Reilly claimed that a public school changed the lyrics to "Silent Night" in order to secularize it. Actually, it was an entirely new song written on the old tune, changed by the former president of Ronald Reagan’s church and performed in churches around the country.

46)
O’Reilly said Best Buy banned the phrase “Merry Christmas.” They didn’t.

47)
O’Reilly claimed the income tax originated with Karl Marx. Actually, it existed before Marx was born.

48)
During the Bush years, O’Reilly said the Clinton tax rates were higher than at any point since World War II. That’s wrong; taxes had been higher numerous times throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

49)
O’Reilly claimed Jane Fonda turned notes smuggled by U.S. prisoners of war over to the Vietnamese. False.

50)
In 2005, O’Reilly said the Bush administration was not engaging in torture. He pointed to a State Department report on human rights that criticized torture—except in the U.S. In any event, we can be sure now that torture took place.

51)
In 2006, O’Reilly said there was no evidence the U.S. used electric shock torture. There was evidence then, and there is evidence now.

52)
O’Reilly also claimed that Geneva Convention protections apply only to uniformed soldiers fighting for a recognized country, as opposed to stateless terrorists. That’s not true. The Geneva Convention applies to everyone.

53)
When O’Reilly gets things wrong, he’s exceptional at talking about how right he is. When he claimed federal housing assistance rose 1,400 percent from Clinton to Bush, he was off by 1,378 percent. When he was called out on it, he said “these are hard numbers.”

54)
In 1986, Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling to free Nelson Mandela from prison. Cheney has repeatedly said it’s because Mandela ran a terrorist operation, but O’Reilly has contradicted Cheney, saying that vote was cast in order to protect poor South Africans from sanctions.

55)
One of O’Reilly’s favorite targets is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He’s famously stated that the ACLU supports pedophiles and a child’s "constitutional right to have sex with adults." This is not at all what the ACLU does.

56)
O’Reilly claimed that the “liberal” Boston Globe didn’t cover the rape of a 9-year-old girl. They did.

57)
O’Reilly claimed that Hillary Clinton can “write anything off” against the Bill Clinton presidential library, thus giving her access to vast funds. Actually, the library’s finances are handled by the government.

58)
Making the case that the Democrats went over the line in their questioning of the Bush administration, O’Reilly claimed that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) questioned Condoleeza Rice's "respect for the troops.” Actually, Boxer questioned Rice’s "respect for the truth."

59)
O’Reilly claimed that Bush’s tax cuts meant that "federal tax revenues will be more this year than at any time during the Clinton administration." Actually, the year 2000 had the highest inflation-adjusted revenue until 2013.

60)
Following the recent massacre at Charlie Hebdo headquarters, O’Reilly said France brought terrorism on itself because they allowed “no-go zones” where Muslims don’t let outsiders in. That’s not true.

61)
O’Reilly then claimed he never said there were no-go zones in France. He said exactly that.

62)
While opining about black America’s problems, O’Reilly claimed the Irish and African-American experiences were equivalent because both “had to leave” their homelands and came to America “with nothing.” Actually, in case you don’t have a history book on hand, Africans were forced to leave in bondage, kept in slavery for hundreds of years, and then, after the abolition of slavery, were thoroughly and systematically oppressed by legal, economic, and social forces that often persist in some form to this day.

63)
O’Reilly said the black dropout rate was worse at the end of the Clinton presidency than at the beginning. It was better.

64)
Criticizing public broadcasting, O’Reilly said PBS is going bankrupt. Actually, PBS’s funding—both public and private—has doubled to about $500 million since O’Reilly first went on Fox in the 1990s.

65)
While in a rant against public spending, O’Reilly claimed liberal Californians wanted the federal government to pay for plastic surgery for prisoners, particularly pointing to an inmate who had “breast reduction surgery” as a liberal cause that targeted “our money.” Actually, that inmate was having a tumor removed.

66)
One of the great political attacks of our time was the 2004 Swift Boating of John Kerry, wherein a political group claimed that Kerry lied extensively about his service during the Vietnam War. Actually, Kerry didn’t lie. In any event, O’Reilly claimed the Swift Boaters had little impact in 2004 and that he hadn’t even seen them on cable news. In fact, Fox News (as well as CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC) covered Swift Boaters extensively.

67)
O’Reilly claimed that Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain Iraq war veteran and a prominent anti-war activist, lied and changed her story about a meeting with President Bush. She didn’t change her story.

68)
O’Reilly said CNN doesn’t have a single conservative commentator. That’s obviously not true; but even being charitable and looking specifically at the time when O’Reilly first said it—March 2005—commentators Jerry Falwell and Robert Novak said otherwise.

69)
O’Reilly claimed that courtroom perjury is on the rise because “they’ve done away with” swearing on the bible before testimony. Actually, the bible is still used before courtroom testimony, and there has been no quantifiable rise in perjury.

70)
While criticizing the 9th circuit appeals court, O’Reilly said they had their cases overturned at a record rate. That’s not true.

71)
O’Reilly claimed that Thomas Jefferson would have mocked “secular fools” over separation of church and state. Actually, Jefferson famously wrote about his support for that separation.

72)
During a heatwave in the southwest, O’Reilly said the dozens of dead homeless people could have found “some place to cool off,” but they were “mentally incapable of taking care of themselves.” Actually, the number of homeless outpaced the number of beds available by thousands.

73)
Arguing about abortion, O’Reilly said a woman’s life could never be in danger during pregnancy. That’s obviously not true.

74)
O’Reilly claimed most Republicans didn’t want NAFTA. Actually, most voted for it.

75)
O’Reilly said he wouldn’t call Sean Penn anti-American. A few minutes earlier, he called Sean Penn anti-American.

76)
O’Reilly claimed he didn’t compare the Koran to Mein Kampf. He did and he continues to do so.

77)
In 2001, O’Reilly claimed 58 percent of single mothers are on welfare. The number was more like 14 percent, less than a quarter of what O’Reilly claimed.

78)
In defense of Florida governor Jeb Bush’s education policies, O’Reilly claimed 37 percent of state universities were black. The number was 18 percent, less than half of what O’Reilly claimed.

79)
In 2001, O’Reilly said the U.S. gave more tax money to foreign countries than any other country. No, Japan gave more then. The U.S. gives more now, somewhat due to the fact that a country we invaded (Afghanistan) receives billions more in aid than any other nation.

80)
When an army recruiter was murdered in 2009, O’Reilly said CNN didn’t cover the crime except for Anderson Cooper. They covered it, lots more.

81)
O’Reilly said the cause of global warming is “guesswork.” Scientists disagree.

82)
O’Reilly said that, unlike Viagra, “birth control is a choice, not a medical condition.” Aside from the fact that doctors say pregnancy is a medical condition, birth control is used to treat a range of other medical conditions as well.

83)
O’Reilly once said “no lies have been told about anyone” on his show. (See above and below.)

84)
G. Gordon Liddy organized the famous Watergate burglaries. He’s also fundraised for John McCain, and McCain accepted his money. During the 2008 presidential race, O’Reilly claimed McCain and Liddy “have nothing to do” with each other. That’s false, not only because of the fundraising but because Liddy interviewed McCain multiple times, even during that very campaign.

85)
O’Reilly claimed that then-Sen. Barack Obama did not cast a vote condemning MoveOn.org ads that targeted Gen. David Petraeus and defended John Kerry. Obama did.

86)
O’Reilly said "no law is going to prevent a woman from giving birth [sic] when she's raped or has incest. No law. Ever.” He meant abortion, as clarified by this next sentence: "...if there's incest, if there's violence in your home, you can go to the courts and they'll decide whether you can have the abortion, not your parents, OK? Every law says it." Here are two laws that do that.

87)
O’Reilly claimed no prisoners died because of abuse at Abu Grahib. Manadel al-Jamadi died.

88)
During a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, O’Reilly said the New York Times editorial board wouldn’t criticize Israel because “American Jews are liberal.” They had already written three such editorials here, here, and here.

89)
In 2008, O’Reilly claimed the Times cut 25 percent of its workforce because of criticism received for publishing an article about terrorism financing. They cut 2 percent, and the supposedly direct connection between the article and the cut was pulled from thin air.

90)
O’Reilly claimed Bush didn’t prohibit White House attorneys from appearing before Congress if transcripts were recorded. Bush did just that.

91)
When O’Reilly saw a 2006 poll saying 53 percent of Americans viewed Hillary Clinton favorably, he said the poll wasn’t scientific. O’Reilly isn’t a statistician (he’s touted unscientific polls himself) and this poll was scientific.

92)
In 2006, O’Reilly said the National Security Agency (NSA) never tapped domestic phone calls. We already knew—and the White House admitted—that they tapped domestic phone calls without a warrant at that point but the rest of pandora’s box was yet to be opened.

93)
O’Reilly said Mary McCarthy, a former CIA agent who leaked information to reporters, was accused of leaking information about the agency’s secret Eastern European prisons. She was never formally accused of that by the CIA, and the Washington Post maintains that while she did leak information to them, it had nothing to do with secret prisons. Instead, she reportedly leaked information about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by the CIA.

94)
O'Reilly said former Mexican president Vincente Fox used his nation’s army to traffic drugs across the border to the U.S. That never happened. Under Fox, Mexico used its army to fight a violent war with cartels.

95)
O’Reilly said New York City teachers are told to ignore students who curse them out. As a former New York City student, I know that’s not true. But if that’s not enough, New York’s public discipline code explicitly points out punishment for obscene language.

96)
O’Reilly claimed Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist famously convicted in in a vast corruption scheme in 2005. Actually, only Republicans received contributions from Abramoff.

97)
O’Reilly claimed renewable energy was a waste of time because “God controls the climate.” He’s also said “nobody can control the climate except God, so give a little extra at mass.” That’s goes against what modern science has concluded: Human beings contribute to climate change.

98)
Criticizing attempts to bring diversity to Christmas, O’Reilly said Santa Claus is white based on the myth’s roots in medieval Greece. But Bill, Santa isn’t real.

99)
One of the most vast and mind-bending lies O’Reilly has ever told came just this week. Nose pointed squarely up, O’Reilly said that he doesn’t believe in personal smears and that he doesn’t condone hate and “guttersniping” that implies politicians like Bush and Obama don’t want to serve their country. Very high minded. While O’Reilly didn’t invent the TV smear, he raised it to a lucrative art. During the Bush administration, he targeted anti-war politicians with exactly this kind of personal smear. In one glaring example from the height of the Iraq war, he said, “Nancy Pelosi and her acolytes, people who like her, they want us to lose in Iraq. They want there to be chaos in Afghanistan. They want this. They're rooting against their own country." He also compares political opponents to Nazis pretty damn often.


Very high minded indeed.

Photos via World Affairs Council of Philadelphia/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III.

Correction: This story previously misidentified who said that former Mexican president Vicente Fox had used his nation's army to traffic drugs across the border to the U.S. It was O'Reilly, not President Obama.

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/bill-o ... t-of-lies/

The definition of coincidence: I just opened an email from a friend that includes a link to that blockbuster article, oskar ~ each of those 99 lies are sourced in the original, so it's gonna be impossible for O'Reilly to maintain his denial ~ I'm curious to see how those "standing with Bill" will react ~

Sooz

The question is, "How many others have been lying?"

I'm guessing the answer, oskar, is ... all [or at least most] ~ but I see a difference between "exaggerating" and flat-out lying ~ I don't get how or why, in today's world, it is so difficult for some to remember that there is likely a video or audio record that someone will dig up of what you said to whom ~

Sooz