O’Reilly Cites His ‘Novel Of Television And Murder’ To Prove His War Zone Creds

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In an odd move on Thursday, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly answered charges of embellishing his war zone experience by citing one of his books — a work of fiction.

In an interview with AdWeek’s TVNewser, O’Reilly dismissed an article by Mother Jones magazine that accused him of lying about being in the Falkand Islands in the 1980s while covering a war for CBS.

O’Reilly insisted he had always said he was in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, with the rest of the American press.

When asked about whether he had ever written or said he was in the Falklands, O’Reilly said he “laid this out” in his first book, “Those Who Trespass.”

The 1998 book, a crime thriller about a journalist who ends up murdering his former colleagues, was a work of fiction.

It’s full title is “Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder.”

“I laid this out in a book called, Those Who Trespass,” he told TV Newser. “That was the first book that I wrote. Soup to nuts, what happened in Buenos Aires during the Falklands war.”

Here is a summary from the book from Amazon.com:

O’Reilly’s first novel tells a story of revenge and murder set against the backdrop of television news. The opening chapters detail the corrupt, often despicable world of the networks, where pretty faces from New York conspire to appropriate the work of those on the front lines. When two of the smarmiest conspirators wind up dead, the list of suspects is as long as the number of people the networks have screwed along the way–hundreds. On the case is Detective Tommy O’Malley, along with aggressive journalist Ashley Van Buren. Against his better judgment, Tommy falls for Ashley and becomes the spunky young writer’s informant. But Ashley’s feelings are mixed, for she is also smitten with charming Shannon Michaels, who happens to be at the top of Tommy’s list of suspects. Although stereotypical secondary characters are a drawback, the novel is nicely paced, and the network milieu works well as a setting for murder.

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