FNC Continues to Support Bill O'Reilly

Scrutiny of Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly’s reporting on the 1982 Falklands war protests isn’t going away, according to The LA Times.

The story that was ignited by a Mother Jones piece titled “Does Bill O’Reilly Have a Brian Williams Problem” looked like a one-day controversy after O’Reilly aggressively countered the claims that he repeatedly misspoke about his time covering the conflict for CBS News.

Mother Jones slammed O’Reilly for loosely using the term “war zone” when recounting his Falklands experience, even though all American journalists were based in Buenos Aires, 1,200 miles away from the fighting. O’Reilly has never said he was on the islands, and maintained he was always describing his time covering the riots that followed in Buenos Aires after the Argentine military junta surrendered to the British at the end of the conflict in June 1982.

Now O’Reilly’s accounts of the riots are being challenged by Eric Engberg, a former CBS News correspondent who was also assigned to the story.

Engberg took to Facebook on Saturday to note that O’Reilly described seeing fatalities at the scene around the presidential palace in the Argentine capital, which did not appear in any reports at the time, and that his accounts of violence and chaos were overstated.

O’Reilly said it was possible Engberg didn’t hear any firing because he stayed inside the hotel. He claimed Engberg’s nickname was “Room Service Eric.”

A Fox News spokesperson said management at the channel is supporting O’Reilly as the squabble is being played out, especially because the incidents being debated happened 33 years ago on another network.

O’Reilly will continue to cover his situation. He has invited former CBS News anchor Dan Rather and Van Gordon Sauter, the CBS News president at the time of the Falklands war, to discuss the matter on Monday’s edition of “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Engberg has also been invited to appear on O’Reilly’s program, but he declined.

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