First it was his lies about being in a “war zone” in the Falklands. Next it was his lies about seeing nuns “gunned down in El Salvador.” Then it was his lies about being outside the door of someone connected to the JFK assassination right before the man committed suicide.
Now, six of Bill O’Reilly’s former colleagues are saying that the Fox News’ host also lied about his time covering the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles for Inside Edition, reported The Huffington Post.
“The were throwing bricks and stones at us. Concrete was raining down on us,” O’Reilly said in a 2006 interview. “The cops saved our butts that time.”
“It didn’t happen,” said Rick Kirham, who acted as Inside Edition’s lead reporter covering the riots, told The Guardian. “If it did, how come none of us remember it?”
From The Guardian:
Several members of the team suggested that O’Reilly may instead be overstating a fracas involving one disgruntled Los Angeles resident, who smashed one of their cameras with a piece of rubble.
Two members of the team said the man was angered specifically by O’Reilly behaving disrespectfully after arriving at the smoking remains of his neighborhood in a limousine, whose driver at one point began polishing the vehicle. O’Reilly is said to have shouted at the man and asked him: “Don’t you know who I am?”
“It was one person with one rock,” said Bob McCall, one of Inside Edition’s crew members who worked with O’Reilly covering the riots. “Nobody was hit.”
O’Reilly, and Fox News, of course, are defending the coverage.
“We were attacked, we were attacked by protesters, where bricks were thrown at us,” O’Reilly said on the Hugh Hewitt Show last week.
Fox News released a statement to HuffPo yesterday which read:
“Bill O’Reilly has already addressed several claims leveled against him. This is nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates. Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. FOX News maintains its staunch support of O’Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.”
Hate to break it to you, Fox, but when multiple people can debunk your main star’s claims, their claims are not “unproven.”
Watch Inside Edition’s report from the Los Angeles riots.
