Fox News host Bill O’Reilly hit back over an article questioning his claims to have covered combat, calling the piece a “political hit job” and its author “a far left zealot” on his show Friday night.
“This man, 56-year-old David Corn, who works for the far left magazine Mother Jones smeared me, your humble correspondent, yesterday, saying I had fabricated some war reporting,” he said.
{mosads}“Mother Jones, which has low circulation, considered by many the bottom rung of journalism in America,” he added.
O’Reilly also said that Corn, the journalist who published the “47 percent” video that dealt a major blow to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, took “the Brian Williams situation and [wrapped] it around my neck for ideological reasons because he has a history of attacking Fox News.”
The piece alleged that O’Reilly had misrepresented his experience covering combat in Argentina during the Falkland War.
It argued the O’Reilly had implied that he was in the midst of combat during the war and that he had misrepresented a protest he covered as combat.
O’Reilly has continued to insist that the protest constituted combat.
“The violence was horrific,” he said on Friday night, “as Argentine soldiers fired into the crowd who were responding with violent acts of their own.”
The bombastic host doubled down, saying that he had reported from “active” war zones and that he had been “in a war zone in Argentina, in the Falklands.”
But critics argued that his phrasing implied that he was closer to wartime combat than he was.
After his monologue, O’Reilly brought Fox News personalities Geraldo Rivera and Bernie Goldberg on to discuss the article.
Rivera and Goldberg both said that O’Reilly was being targeted because he is a conservative figure — and Rivera seemed to compare the events surrounding the article to the Red Scare.
“What’s next, is Senator Joe McCarthy going to be resurrected,” he asked.
Corn has strongly defended the article, and criticized O’Reilly’s response.
Earlier Friday, Corn said that O’Reilly had resorted to name calling, rather than addressing the substance of the allegation he and his co-author, Daniel Schulman, had made.
“To me, the issue here is whether a media figure and journalist like Bill O’Reilly, who claims to be a truth teller, can get away without answering questions about specific statements he’s made, and hide behind name calling,” he told Politico. Corn also released the questions he had sent to Fox News and O’Reilly.
Both Corn and O’Reilly show no signs of backing down.
While appearing on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” on Friday, O’Reilly said there is “nothing” that he had reported in the past that was exaggerated.
“I’ve always told the truth about my reportorial experiences, and that’s that. I’m not on the defensive. I’m on the offensive,” he said.
The scrutiny of O’Reilly comes after NBC News anchor Brian Williams was suspended for telling a story about the Iraq war that was not true.
This story was updated at 8:33 p.m.