Bill O’Reilly’s war reporting questioned by liberal magazine

A liberal magazine accused Bill O’Reilly of misrepresenting his experiences in wartime journalism, a charge the Fox News host is denying.

O’Reilly has said repeatedly on and off the air that he saw combat while in Argentina to cover the Falklands War for CBS News. In his 2001 book, O’Reilly said that he has reported from “active war zones,” citing that conflict.

{mosads}An article in Mother Jones on Thursday, though, says that O’Reilly was never with combat troops fighting during the war, and alleges he misrepresented a protest that he covered as a combat experience.

The article quotes foreign correspondents who say that they do not remember anyone from CBS News being on the Falkland Islands, the remote territory that was the center of the war between British and Argentine forces.

O’Reilly denied the magazine’s allegations in an interview Thursday night.

“I was not on the Falkland Islands and I never said I was,” he told Politico. “I was in Buenos Aires … In Buenos Aires we were in a combat situation after the Argentines surrendered.”

The authors of the Mother Jones piece argue that a protest, where Argentines demonstrated against the military junta’s decision to pull back from the conflict, did not constitute combat in a war zone. They said there is little evidence to suggest there was major violence during the protest.

“It’s a hit piece,” O’Reilly told Politico. “Everything I said about what I reported in South and Central America is true. Everything.”

He also called the author of the piece, David Corn, a “despicable guttersnipe.”

Corn hit back, saying that O’Reilly had engaged in name calling rather than offering a substantive defense of his comments.

“He said he was in the war zone during the Falkland Island conflicts — the conflict was in the Falkland Islands, it was not in Buenos Aires,” Corn told Politico. “He covered a protest after the war was over in Buenos Aires. I don’t think that’s a reasonable definition of a combat situation. If you look up ‘combat situation’ in the dictionary, it’s not ‘an ugly protest’.”

He also said that he had given Fox News more than nine hours to respond to the story.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

The allegations come after conservative media helped to intensify the scrutiny of NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who was suspended for six months last week after it became clear he had repeatedly told a story about covering the Iraq War that was not true.

O’Reilly used a segment of his show last week to say that the events around Williams would make Americans wary of what they hear from the press.

But he also said while appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that he was upset by anyone taking joy in Williams’s downfall.

—This story was updated at 7:48 p.m.