Video: CBS Staffers and Former Correspondents Strongly Contradict O’Reilly’s “War Zone” Claims
There are now seven journalists on the record who were with Bill O’Reilly in Argentina in 1982, and they’re all contradicting his “war zone” stories: CBS Staffers Refute Bill O’Reilly’s ‘War Zone’ Story.
On his show “The O’Reilly Factor” in 2013, O’Reilly told a guest, “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. 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.”
Mother Jones challenged some of these claims. O’Reilly responded by accusing the magazine of trying to smear him to hurt Fox News, and said the report’s co-author, David Corn, is a liar and an “irresponsible guttersnipe.”
Eric Engberg, a CBS correspondent who was also in Buenos Aires at the time, defended Corn in a Facebook post on Friday and said, “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone.’”
Longtime NBC News correspondent George Lewis, who was also there at the time, agreed with Engberg, writing on Facebook, “Cushiest war I ever covered.”
Did O’Reilly’s photographer get “run down” and bloodied?
CNN has interviewed seven people who were there for CBS, and none of them recall anyone from the network being injured.
“If somebody got hurt, we all would have known,” Alvarez said.