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.
Now let’s not be too tough on Bill. When he was in Buenos Aires he ordered his steak well done and it came out of the kitchen medium. It wasn’t all easy going in hotel cocktail lounges for our plucky war correspondent.
What a gift for Brian Williams, to have the spotlight turned on blowhard O’Reilly.
Of course this won’t hurt Bill’s career. Faux News journalists are expected to lie.
The sad truth is that Bill-O probably really does believe that he was in combat and that every other contemporaneous observer is now lying about it for nefarious reasons. That seems to be one of the job qualifications / personality traits that is necessary to survive and thrive at the GOP propaganda store (aka Fox ‘News’). Namely, in order to work there you have to be able to completely suspend disbelief in objective reality and completely buy into the alternate reality painted by those in the Fox bubble.
Whether the police fired into the crowd or over the heads of the crowd, how does covering a riot rise to the level of a war zone? He’s also made other claims about being in combat as well. That Pinhead should be toast, but Fox will cover for him.
We need to remember that Brian Williams is (was) a “serious reporter” and BillO is (was) just the “entertainment wing” of “Fox News”…