Bill O’Reilly did David Letterman on the Late Show Tuesday night to talk about, among other things, controversies involving both him and reporter Brian Williams.
O’Reilly discussed Williams’ recent six month suspension from NBC’s Nightly News for misrepresenting events that he experienced while covering the Iraq War. O’Reilly said he believes NBC should, and will, bring him back.
When Letterman asked O’Reilly, who has also recently been accused of making false claims during his journalism career, if he has ever “fibbed” on air O’Reilly said no.
Comparing O’Reilly’s apparent mischaracterizations of past reporting to Brian Williams‘ exaggerations about his time spent in Iraq, Letterman asked, “Is there a difference?”
“Only if I did something that wasn’t true,” O’Reilly replied, according to Mediaite. “What I said was accurate,” he insisted, despite evidence to the contrary put forward by organizations like Mother Jones and Media Matters, among others. “It worked out OK for me,” he said, noting that he got “even more viewers” out of the whole thing, a 20% increase.
O’Reilly told Letterman that while he may “bloviate” and “give analysis,” he has never “fibbed” on air because it’s “not worth it” for him to do that. When Letterman suggested that both O’Reilly and Williams should be held to the same standard of trust, O’Reilly said that his 15 years at number one of Fox News proves that viewers do “trust” him.
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