Six other CBS journalists challenge Argentina claims as Fox News host calls allegations ‘garbage’ and says he will show footage to support his reporting

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Former colleagues of Bill O’Reilly who worked alongside the Fox News anchorman in Argentina as the Falklands War ended more than 30 years ago have contradicted his claims to have encountered a perilous situation in a “war zone”.

Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly accused of exaggerating war zone exploits Read more

Eric Engberg, a fellow CBS News correspondent who was in Buenos Aires with O’Reilly in 1982, said the situation there “was not a war zone or even close” and that he and other colleagues did not recall a dangerous incident O’Reilly describes involving an injured cameraman.

“He has displayed a willingness to twist the truth in a way that seeks to invent a battlefield that did not exist,” Engberg wrote in a Facebook post. “He also ought to be ashamed of himself.”

Six other CBS journalists also challenge O’Reilly’s claims, CNN reported on Sunday, adding further pressure on the 65-year-old host of the O’Reilly Factor.

Details from O’Reilly’s account of covering the war between the UK and Argentina as a young correspondent for CBS were sharply questioned on Friday in an article on the website of Mother Jones, a liberal magazine.

O’Reilly offered a robust response to the article, calling it “total bullshit”, “disgusting”, “defamation” and “a piece of garbage”.

Earlier this month, O’Reilly joined critics of Brian Williams over alleged exaggerations and falsehoods that had emerged in the NBC host’s own reporting. Williams was suspended from presenting the Nightly News for six months, pending an NBC inquiry into his work.

O’Reilly wrote in a 2001 memoir that he had reported “on the ground in active war zones” such as the Falklands, and said in a 2004 column that he had “survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falklands war”. In 2013 he recounted on Fox News that while working “in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands” he had dragged a cameraman who was “bleeding from the ear” to safety while being chased by the Argentinian army. On Sunday he named the cameraman as Roberto Moreno.

Bill O'Reilly calls accusations of exaggerated war reporting 'total bullshit' Read more

This week, O’Reilly claimed never to have suggested that he reported from the islands themselves.

“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 Argentinian capital, which is 1,200 miles from the Falklands, was not the site of any combat during the 1982 war with Britain.

Engberg challenged O’Reilly’s latest claims. “We – meaning the American networks – were all in the same, modern hotel and we never saw any troops, casualties or weapons,” he wrote. “It was not a war zone or even close. It was an ‘expense account zone’.”

The veteran correspondent also said that neither he nor other colleagues remembered the alleged “bleeding from the ear” incident supposedly involving one of their cameramen. Engberg said the only unrest that occurred was a “short-lived” riot that “consisted mostly of chanting, fist-shaking and throwing coins”.

“No one who reported back to our hotel newsroom after the disturbance was injured; if a cameraman had been ‘bleeding from the ear’ he would have immediately reported that to his superiors at the hotel,” he wrote, urging O’Reilly to identify the alleged cameraman by name.

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O’Reilly’s description of an injured cameraman was also questioned by Manny Alvarez, a cameraman for CBS News in Buenos Aires at the time. “Nobody remembers this happening,” Alvarez told CNN’s Reliable Sources. “If somebody got hurt, we all would have known”.

CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that in all, “CNN has interviewed seven people who were there for CBS, and none of them recall anyone from the network being injured”. According to CNN, Moreno is now based in Venezuela and declined to comment.

Speaking to Fox News’s Media Buzz on Sunday, O’Reilly dismissed Engberg’s allegations and said he was the victim of a politically motivated campaign. He cited a New York Times article on the riot that described police firing teargas at protesters and one firing shots from a pistol into the air.

“I don’t think he was there,” O’Reilly said of Engberg. “I don’t think he knows what happened. And I’ll tell you why: I left the hotel. Engberg was still in the hotel.”

O’Reilly said he would be showing footage his crew obtained from the protest and further addressing the allegations on his programme on Monday.

“This is such a smear, it is unbelievable,” he said.