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.
