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Still Furious, Bill O’Reilly? Odd Considering This Scandal Is Your Fault [Opinion]

By Toni Matthews
Published on: 05:31 PST, Feb 22, 2015

Bill O’Reilly is reportedly very furious over being called out about his reporting. But exactly how is O’Reilly’s current predicament anyone else’s fault but his own?

As you probably know, NBC News anchor Brian Williams was forced to take a leave of absence from NBC Nightly News. The reason is partially because Williams was caught in a lie.

The other half of it was the #BrianWilliamsMisremembers meme and VERY public backlash.

Somehow, Bill thought he was immune to being fact-checked himself when he decided to get on his Fox News soapbox to tell everyone what he thought of the Brian Williams scandal.

O’Reilly asked us to hold news anchors accountable for dishonesty, to fact-check and then fact-check some more.

So… wouldn’t the Mother Jones story calling out Bill for dishonesty be the system he asked for at work?

It’s doubtful Mother Jones would have bothered to call out O’Reilly if he hadn’t called out Brian Williams while having a potentially questionable problem with his own honesty about his experiences.

If this is trouble O’Reilly didn’t want, why did he say anything? Did he honestly believe putting himself in the spotlight wouldn’t immediately result in fact-checking his career?

More importantly, if Bill O’Reilly has done nothing wrong, why get angry? Why hurl insults?

“O’Reilly responded to the story by launching a slew of personal invective. He did not respond to the details of the story. Instead, he called me a “liar,” a “left-wing assassin,” and a “despicable guttersnipe.” He said that I deserve “to be in the kill zone.” (You can read one of my responses here.) And in his show-opening “Talking Points memo” monologue on Friday evening, he continued the name-calling.”

Most importantly… why didn’t Bill take the opportunity to directly counter the claims made by By David Corn and Daniel Schulman over at Mother Jones?

“Mother Jones did give O’Reilly a chance to “deal with this” earlier. Before posting the article, we sent him and Fox News a detailed list of questions and asked for comments and clarifications. They chose not to respond at all.”

The only answer I can come up with is that O’Reilly is such an ego-maniacal windbag that he’ll gladly take any opportunity to be discussed and latch onto it, all so he can play the victim and claim that he’s being targeted by some vague “leftist agenda”.

Really?

It’s your life, Mr. O’Reilly!

I imagine no one else would have easier access to the events of one’s life than the person who lived it.

So if Bill O’Reilly was indeed in the mix during the Falkland Islands War, I’m sure he has notes somewhere. Maybe notes that contain the phone numbers, addresses, names of the people there with Bill “in the war zone,” all of whom I’m certain would vouch for him.

Yes, surely there is some factual footprint that would place O’Reilly exactly where he claimed to be so many times.

It’s not enough to answer accusations with opinion, Bill. Though you’ve done that for many years, it’s at times like this where you have to get back to being an actual reporter and fight facts with facts.

A letter to one’s boss from way back is a weak rebuttal to a laundry list of raised questions. Unfortunately for Bill O’Reilly, I strongly suspect he believes dropping his fist on his desk over at Fox News and yelling at detractors is all that he needs to do in order prove that he’s right.

After all, Bill O’Reilly enjoys shouting matches; he clearly believes because he’s louder, that makes him the winner in any debate.

Bill O’Reilly enjoys being right no matter what, even if his version of right is “because I said so.” This is a person who readily throws stones from a glass house and can’t believe that it actually shattered around him.

And so, we come back to Bill O’Reilly being “furious” at the fact that his journalistic integrity was called into question not long after he himself made the rather sensible demand that journalistic integrity be called into question.

The lesson here is that you cannot expect to avoid being fact-checked in the 21st century… especially when it was you who brought up the brilliant idea in the first place!

Just because O’Reilly pointed his finger to the left didn’t mean fingers from all directions wouldn’t be pointing back at him. It’s a lesson that was clearly learned the hard way.

Bill O’Reilly, the next time someone gets caught in a lie and you need to share your opinion about it, perhaps it would be smart to make sure your own house is in order.

Until then, please spare us another sermon from your self-made pulpit.

[Image Credit: Fox News/Mother Jones]

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