Letterman grills Bill O'Reilly over reporting fabrications: "People must trust you"

O'Reilly appeared on Letterman to deflect questions about his history of lying on the air

Published March 25, 2015 1:27PM (EDT)

     (YouTube/CBS)
(YouTube/CBS)

On Tuesday night, notorious prevaricator and Fox host Bill O'Reilly was a guest on "The Late Show" with David Letterman. On a new network in a different time slot, O'Reilly prevaricated again.

Letterman asked O'Reilly to compare his fabrications with those of Brian Williams -- what was the difference between two middle-aged white liars?

"What I did was accurate, okay, what I said was accurate," O'Reilly said, "So we had a controversy there and we put forth what my side was, they put forth what their side was, folks decided and, you know, it worked out okay for me and I got even more viewers."

"Have you ever fibbed on the air?" Letterman asked.

"Fibbed? Not that I know of," replied O'Reilly, with the confused air of someone who is in fact fibbing. "What I do is analysis, different from what other people do. So I bloviate and give my opinion, as you well know. But it's not worth it for me to do that."

O'Reilly later said that his situation was different from Williams' because "I hit it immediately hard and said, 'Look, this is the facts, this is what happened."

"I'm in my 19th season now. Fifteen years at number one. Out ratings now are as high as they've ever been, so I think they do trust me and I'm glad they do."


By Joanna Rothkopf

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Bill O'reilly Brian Williams David Letterman Journalism Lying News The Late Show Video