Watchdog site Media Matters has uncovered another instance of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly fabricating stories from his “war time” coverage.
O’Reilly has repeatedly said that he witnessed the execution of nuns in 1981 while reporting on El Salvador’s civil war. According to MM,
“On the September 27, 2005, edition of his talk-radio programThe Radio Factor, O’Reilly said, ‘”I’ve seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador.’ And on the December 14, 2012, edition of his Fox News show, O’Reilly spoke of telling his mother that ‘I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.'”
But even by O’Reilly’s own timeline, this isn’t possible: In his book, The No Spin Zone, he wrote that he arrived in the village of Meanguera shortly after it had been “wiped out” by the rebels. He did not, however, make any mention of seeing nuns, or anyone else for that matter, actually being killed while he was there.
O’Reilly, in a statement to Mediaite, said that “when he said on Fox News ‘I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head,’ he was referring to seeing the ‘horrendous images’ of nuns murdered while reporting from El Salvard, not witnessing those murders firsthand. His statement, however, does not address his radio show claim, ‘I’ve seen guys gun down nuns in El Salvador.'”
Watch O’Reilly’s conflicting accounts of his time in El Salvador via Media Matters.
