It didn’t take long for Bill O’Reilly to hit back against Mother Jones’s in-depth look at his questionable accounts of reporting during the Falklands War, firing off a string of insults to Politico Thursday night. This morning, Daniel Schulman, who co-wrote the report with MoJo DC bureau chief David Corn, appeared on CNN’s “New Day,” where he laid out the details of the story, and defended the reporting:
“The only place combat took place during that war was in the remote Falklands Islands, which were 1,200 miles from Buenos Aires where Bill O’Reilly and the rest of the press corps is,” Schulman told host Chris Cuomo. “The combat situation that he says he was involved in now, actually, was a very violent protest that took place after the war was over. Now, it was violent, but it was not a combat situation.”
CNN’s senior media correspondent Brian Stelter also appeared on the program to discuss the story, highlighting the fact that O’Reilly was quick to dismiss the report only after ignoring requests for comment by Mother Jones for most of the day on Thursday.
“Brian Williams apologized and went silent,” Stelter said. “O’Reilly started calling your colleague David Corn a ‘guttersnipe,’ a ‘piece of garbage,’ a ‘liar’ a ‘left-wing assassin.’ I think O’Reilly was talking less about your allegations and more about the personalities involved here.”
Stelter also spoke to Don Lemon about the Mother Jones report Thursday night:
For more media reactions, check out Erik Wemple of the Washington Post‘s thoughts. You can read the exclusive report in its entirety here.
