(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Rudolph's nose was fading fast, the sleigh was taking fire and I was in no position to ask questions. pic.twitter.com/l1nLx8LF6U
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) February 20, 2015
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.
No reasonable person would think to defend NBC’s Brian Williams for fabricating his claim that a helicopter he was in took fire during the Iraq War in 2003. After passing the story off as true for 12 years, Williams deserved to be nailed for his lies; the truly sad thing is that it took so long before anyone paid attention.
Journalists (and comedians) have justifiably mined Williams’ dishonesty for material and personal gain, but lost in the Sturm und Drang has been the skeletons in the closest of perhaps Williams’ most vocal critic. Bill O’Reilly has built his career on having “been there.” The experience he claims is what he believes allows him the gravitas to weigh in on some of the burning issues of the day. As with Williams, O’Reilly has constructed his career on a foundation of experience, integrity, and credibility (and more than a little ego and self-love). Turns out Bill-o may have his own issues created by a willingness to play fast and loose with the truth and construct a narrative out of smoke, mirrors, and lies.
Williams’ dishonesty about his alleged combat experience led to his career implosion, and O’Reilly has long claimed to have been on the ground during the 1982 Falklands War and experience combat there. In fact, it appears he was nowhere near the fighting between Britain and Argentina.
The truth is that O’Reilly is prone to massaging the truth to fit whatever narrative he happens to be pushing on a particular day. In this case, he seems to have invented events that paint him in a positive, heroic light. He’s told the stories for years, and now that he’s been called on his lies, his response is to smear David Corn and Daniel Schulman and to portray himself as being martyred by the “Liberal Media.” When you can’t address accusations, the truly shameless attack the messengers and hope the message will be obscured by the smoke.
Stay classy, eh?
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 England 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.”
Mother Jones’ David Corn and Daniel Schulman relay four instances in which O’Reilly clearly lied about his reporting during the Falklands War. The problem with the war was that it occurred in such a remote corner of the globe that few reporters were able to witness the fighting. Most, like O’Reilly, never left Buenos Aires. There was simply no way for an American reporter to reach the war zone, and in fact none did.
There are plenty of reporters who can corroborate Corn and Schulman’s reporting. The British military tightly controlled the British press’ access to the war zone, and the Argentinians weren’t about to let American reporters anywhere near the fighting.
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.”
In fact, the only journalist representing an American network to reach the Falklands during the war was Robin Lloyd of NBC News. Despite O’Reilly’s attempt at puffery, there’s no evidence that supports his claims to having witnessed the fighting and coming under fire. None of his colleagues have stepped up to defend his claims, because they couldn’t reach the war zone, either.
How, then, are O’Reilly’s (evidently inaccurate and dishonest) claims fundamentally different from the false, self-congratulatory fabrication that brought down Brian Williams?
The truth, of course, is there there IS no difference, and O’Reilly’s falsehoods are arguably even more egregious. Williams claimed to have been in a helicopter that came under fire in Iraq in 2003. O’Reilly claimed to have witnessed a war he never came closer than 1200 miles to. He also fabricated a tale about performing a heroic act while coming under fire. He’s conflated his Argentinian sojourn into defense of his credibility as someone with gravitas, someone who’s been there:
“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.” In point of fact, it appears O’Reilly never saw what he claims to have seen, and whatever shred of credibility he could still lay claim to has vanished, like ashes on the wind.
NBC News acted quickly and decisively in suspending Williams without pay for six months, effectively ending his career as a national news anchor, much less a journalist. What remains to be seen is what, if anything, Fox News Channel will do now that they’re faced with a similar dilemma. No reasonable person takes FNC’s claims of commitment to journalistic integrity (“Fair and Balanced?” Only if FNC is your sole sources of news and information.) seriously, so expecting them to react as NBC News did seems to stretch the bounds of credulity. I hope to be proven wrong, but I suspect O’Reilly will emerge from this controversy intact, his position strengthened for having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune- i.e.- the Liberal Media.
Don’t even get me started about his claims of having seen combat in Kuwait….
