Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley    

If you were reporting from the capital of a country at war, would you say you were reporting from a "war zone"? There's no way to answer that question without more details. If, during America's involvement in the Vietnam War, you have been in Saigon, then, yes. If you had been in Washington then, despite frequent demonstrations and riots, certainly not. Right now, Kiev, possibly, Moscow, no. 

So, does Bill O'Reilly have, in the words of Mother Jones, a "Brian William problem"? 

The timing and source of the allegations is suspicious. Social media has taken down a liberal news anchor then, almost immediately, a liberal blog makes similar, if rather weaker, allegations against a conservative host on Fox News.

The controversial claim is one that O'Reilly has repeated in various ways over the years, that he was in a "war zone" when he covered the Falklands Conflict from Buenos Aries. The fighting between Britain and Argentina took place entirely in and around the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and South Sandwich Island, which are hundreds of miles from Argentina and more than 1,000 from Buenos Aries. 

This is not quite, however, in the Brian Williams category of making a simply false statement about being in a particular helicopter. The Mother Jones examples are mostly of O'Reilly listing "war zones" he has been in, for example, citing:

"in the war zones of [the] Falkland conflict in Argentina, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland"

It also cites a story where O'Reilly claims that his photographer was hit by a truck and was bleeding from the head while they were being chased by soldiers. It sounds very dramatic for something that was over 1,000 miles from the military conflict. Except that Argentina was a military dictatorship at the time. Soldiers were routinely on the streets. It is quite believable that one, as O'Reilly claims, pointed a gun in his face. Just weeks after the Argentinian forces in the Falklands surrendered, protest and riots in Buenos Aries and other Argentinian cities led to the military junta collapsing. The events which O'Reilly describes are quite credible for the period. This blog cannot attest to their accuracy, but unlike the William case in Iraq, and other allegations surrounding his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, we do not have specific people contradicting what O'Reilly says – just liberal bloggers who weren't there suggesting they may not be true.

The "war zones" claim is a stretch, at least for the duration of the Falklands Conflict itself, but the rioting that followed pitted the Argentinian military directly against their own people.

Was Northern Ireland a "war zone"? People were killed. There were soldiers on the streets. The number of deaths in thirty years was somewhat higher than the number killed by al Qaeda on a single day in 2001. On the other hand, the murder rate in Northern Ireland throughout the period was lower than that of New York City. However, it is certainly possible that O'Reilly saw rioters in pitched battles with the police or army, so "war zone" is a stretch but not absurd. 

O'Reilly has questions to answer, but he has not been caught in direct fabrication.

Keith Olbermann's offences are quite different. This is not fabrication, but offensive tweeting. He responded to a tweet about fundraising for charity at Pennsylvania State University with the single word "pitiful". He later claimed that he did not mean that raising money for pediatric cancer patients was pitiful but that standards of education at Pennsylvania State are. Still later he apologized:

I apologize for the PSU tweets. I was stupid and childish and way less mature than the students there who did such a great fundraising job.

Which is gracious and the right thing to say. He has been suspended by ESPN for a week.