Now that it's clear that
Bill O'Reilly's war zone reporting has been only the front lines of his fictional War on Christmas, he's got an awful lot of questions to answer. David Corn at
Mother Jones gave him ample opportunity to answer some of those questions before publishing his piece that exposed O'Reilly for the fraud that he is, to no avail. O'Reilly refused to respond to Corn, but granted interviews to other reporters.
He resorted to name-calling, saying I was a "liar," a "left-wing assassin,"and a "despicable guttersnipe." He said that I deserve "to be in the kill zone." (You can read one of my responses here.) It was clear that O'Reilly had no interest in answering the actual questions about his wartime reporting claims.
Here's a synopsis of the
questions O'Reilly is refusing to answer:
- How does O'Reilly explain his claim that he was in a war zone in the Falklands war between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982 when it appears that no American reporters were allowed in the war zone?
- What specifically was the "combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands War" that he "survived" to write about in a 2004 column?
- Can O'Reilly elaborate on the claim he made to Tucker Carlson in 2003 that "I've covered wars, okay? I've been there. The Falklands, Northern Ireland, the Middle East. I've almost been killed three times, okay.'" Like the circumstances in which he almost died?
- About that "war zone" in Argentina, where his photographer "got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete" and O'Reilly heroically saved him: "When and where did this happen?"
Please head below the fold for more of these unanswered questions.
- Will O'Reilly comment on why he is the only reporter who was present during a protest in Buenos Aires when the Falklands surrendered to say that a "major riot ensued and many were killed," as reported in his book, The No Spin Zone? No other journalists reported deaths.
- When and where were the "firefights in South and Central America" O'Reilly said he had been caught in on his radio show on January 13, 2005?
- How does he explain the discrepancy from his No Spin Zone account about reporting from Meanguera, El Salvador, in 1982 with what was actually recorded on film and broadcast on CBS News at the time? In the book, he said the village 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." On the news footage, there are people walking around and only a couple of burned structures.
- Did he ever do any other reporting trips to El Salvador or Argentina or elsewhere in Central and South America than the two he included in No Spin Zone?
- When he said on his television show in 2008 that he had been "in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland," where specifically was he talking about, particularly with the Middle East and Northern Ireland? What wars, where, and when?
- In another book, Keep It Pithy, he wrote "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America." Corn asks, "Where did this occur?"
That's an awful lot of valid questions about some very specific memories O'Reilly claims to have. Questions that really should be answered, if O'Reilly or Fox News gives half a damn about integrity. But if you expect the higher ups at Fox News to be looking for answers to these questions from their star, don't hold your breath.
