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[h=4]O'Reilly defends himself against charges[/h]Left-leaning journalists have engaged in a smear campaign to ruin his reputation, Bill O'Reilly said Sunday on Fox News.
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FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly(Photo: Stan Godlewski for USA TODAY)
Left-leaning journalists have engaged in a smear campaign to ruin his reputation, Bill O'Reilly said Sunday on Fox News.
Appearing Sunday on #MediaBuzz, a Fox News TV show hosted by Howard Kurtz, the TV host and political commentator defended his recollections of his coverage of the Falklands Islands conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982.
O'Reilly has been hit with a double-barreled attack recently on his past. In his 2001 book, The No Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America, O'Reilly wrote, "You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands."
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Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and liberal magazine Mother Jones are at odds after the outlet questioned O'Reilly's experience during the Falklands War.
Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Retired CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg, who was covering the Falklands conflict for the network with O'Reilly in 1982 posted his own version of events Saturday on Facebook. "We — meaning the American networks — were all in the same, modern hotel and we never saw any troops, casualties or weapons," Engberg wrote. "It was not a war zone or even close. It was an "expense account zone."
That follows a Mother Jones magazine article from Thursday that held up O'Reilly's description of his coverage as being a combat zone, calling it the Fox News host's own "Brian Williams problem."
USA TODAY
Rieder: Now O'Reilly's under fire for exaggerations
When Kurtz asked O'Reilly if he wished he had worded the incident differently, O'Reilly said, "No."
"When you have soldiers and military police firing into the crowed ... and you have people who are injured and hurt and you are in the middle of that, that is the definition," O'Reilly said.
O'Reilly said that David Corn, the author of the Mother Jones article and an MSNBC analyst, and Engberg, are trying to smear him and Fox News. "This is splitting hairs, trying anything they can to bring me down because of the Brian Williams situation. That is exactly what this is."
Kurtz agreed that O'Reilly had not been hypercritical of Williams and had defended the NBC anchor after he had to retract his story that he was in a helicopter during the Iraq War that came under enemy fire and was forced down. Williams has since been suspended without pay for six months.
Another guest on the show, The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, characterized the clash as one of ideology. "I understand the impulse in the clutter of media to try to simplify stories and because Brian Williams was such a big story trying to link this. ... I don't think it was warranted," he said. "Brian Williams was in charge of a nightly newscast seen by 9 million. Theoretically, as managing editor and anchor he decided what into that newscast. That's a position of tremendous journalistic responsibility."
On the other hand, Zurawik said, "Bill O'Reilly is the most popular person on cable news TV, but it's the nighttime show that has a very different agenda on TV and no one on cable TV ... says these are journalistic entities."
O'Reilly said that he is attempting to get original footage from CBS "so that people can see for themselves."
"These guys want to come after me, I'm here," O'Reilly said. "Anybody who says my reporting in Argentina was erroneous, they can come on my show tomorrow night."
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider
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