Bill O'Reilly has recently received major heat for fabricating stories about his early days as a reporter, including stories about reporting in Argentina during the Falklands War and about his presence at the suicide of George de Mohrenschildt in Florida. Now, liberal media watchdog Media Matters reports that he may have made up yet another tale, this time about witnessing the execution of several American nuns in El Salvador during the country's civil war.
O'Reilly claimed at least twice to have seen this happen, according to the report -- once, on the Sept. 27, 2005 edition of his show "The Radio Factor," he said, "I've seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador." On Dec. 14, 2012, on his Fox News show "The O'Reilly Factor," he recounted telling his mom, "I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head."
According to Media Matters' Olivia Marshall, O'Reilly has contradicted his own story numerous times:
However, O'Reilly could not possibly have witnessed the murder of the churchwomen if his own timeline is to be believed. The former CBS correspondent only arrived in El Salvador in 1981, as he mentioned on the February 22, 2002, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, saying (according to Nexis transcript), "Before I went to El Salvador in 1981, I talked with some experienced Latin American experts, people who had seen the brutal wars down there for themselves. I had never been in a war zone before, so I wanted some prep."...
O'Reilly even admitted he had arrived in El Salvador "right after" the killings during an interview on WVVH-TV's American Dreams Show on September 26, 2009, apparently contradicting his other assertions that he'd witnessed them...
In a statement, Media Matters' President Bradley Beychok condemned the inconsistency. "Now that he's been exposed as a serial fabricator," he said. "Fox News should hold him to the same journalistic standards that any news organization would or else admit that their network is a joke not journalism."
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