Bill O'Reilly facing accusations he lied about being 'in combat' in South America - but hits back at 'politically-motivated smear job' and stands by every word

• e-mail

One week after Brian Williams was unceremoniously kicked off the air by NBC for lying about his time in Iraq, combative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly is facing allegations he lied about his own wartime experiences.

According to left-leaning magazine Mother Jones, 65-year-old O'Reilly exaggerated his coverage of the Falklands War and the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. 

While NBC at first tried to downplay Williams' false report, O'Reilly took the opposite stance Thursday, vigorously defending his reporting in an interview with Daily Mail Online, in which he called the Mother Jones article a 'hit piece' written by a reporter with a grudge.

'The report is a politically motivated smear job by a guy who has a long history of doing this. All you have to do is Google David Corn, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly to see that he does this on a regular basis,' O'Reilly said.  

Scroll down for video 

Mother Jones published a report Thursday, calling into question Bill O'Reilly's coverage of the Falklands Wars and the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s - when he was then working for CBS News 

'He does this because he's a far-left zealot, he doesn't like the operation, so he sees an opportunity to try to tie me to Brian Williams and he takes it.' 

It's a 'totally dishonest piece,' according to O'Reilly, who adds: 'Everything I've ever said about my reportorial career is accurate. I have never mislead anyone or said anything that is untrue.'

The Mother Jones article trawls through decades-old interviews in which O'Reilly said he had reported from 'active war zones', including the Falklands conflict - even though no American journalist was witness to the fighting during the 10-week battle between the UK and Argentina in spring 1982.

The magazine also claims that O'Reilly overstated the destruction he saw in one El Salvadoran town he visited during that fighting there in the early 80s.

Corn says he gave O'Reilly and his network nine hours to comment on the story, and says their refusal to talk speaks for itself.

'To me, the issue here is whether a media figure and journalist like Bill O'Reilly, who claims to be a truth teller, can get away without answering questions about specific statements he's made, and hide behind name calling,' Corn told On Media on Thursday. 'I would encourage anyone else who covers this story to get Bill O'Reilly to answer those questions - if not to me, than to anyone else.' 

O'Reilly stands by his work for CBS, saying Mother Jones reporter David Corn (right) was looking for a way to tie him to the Brian Williams (left) scandal 

The Mother Jones report centers mainly on O'Reilly's  time covering the Falklands War in 1982, when the then 32-year-old reporter was working for CBS. 

O'Reilly arrived in Buenos Aires just before the country surrendered to British troops leaving the small chain 1,200 miles south of the Argentinian capital under the control of the United Kingdom.

O'Reilly's wording in several interviews seems to be most at issue. While O'Reilly visited war zones, he includes the Falklands in these general statements - making it seem as if he actually claims to have seen action between British and Argentinian troops.

'You know that I am not easily shocked. I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands.' he said in his 2001 book The No Spin Zone.

However, during the Falklands War, no American journalists were approved to visit the chain during conflict, something CBS' lead reporter for the conflict, Bob Schieffer, and producer Susan Zirinsky, confirmed to Mother Jones. 

They say the CBS team worked out the Buenos Aires bureau, and were put up in a Sheraton hotel more than a thousand miles away from the fighting.

'He said he was in the war zone during the Falkland Island conflicts - the conflict was in the Falkland Islands, it was not in Buenos Aires,' Mother Jones reporter David Corn told On The Media. 'He covered a protest after the war was over in Buenos Aires. I don't think that's a reasonable definition of a combat situation. If you look up 'combat situation' in the dictionary, it's not 'an ugly protest'.'

O'Reilly is now saying that he never claimed to have actually traveled to the Falkland Islands,  and that he did no wrong in describing the chaos in Buenos Aires after the Argentinian surrender as a 'war zone'.  

'All you have to do is get the video from CBS about what happened the night that they surrendered. The Argentinians, in Buenos Aires - it certainly was a war zone where bullets were being shot people were going down. 

'It was combat of the closest quarters. There's no question about it. I filed two reports it led the [Dan] Rather broadcast video and then I filed later on and I got an internal memo from CBS commending me on my coverage. When bullets are shot it's combat. By soldiers. That's what happened.' 

But Mother Jones also questioned his recollections of these riots in Buenos Aires, citing the heart-stopping story O'Reilly told a Hamptons TV station in 2009 about nearly being shot at in the streets. 

O'Reilly covered riots in Buenos Aires after the Argentinian junta surrendered to the British, and called the chaotic scene the definition of a 'war zone'. Above, a grab from a video CBS shot of the protests

In his book, O'Reilly said 'many were killed' in the clashes at the end of the war, but that the Mother Jones article points to articles the New York Times, the Miami Herald and UPI published at the time, saying there were no fatalities 

In the interview, O'Reilly said he and a cameraman got caught up in a stampede when a camera 'went flying'.

'I saved the tape because it was unbelievable tape. But I dragged him off the street because he was bleeding from the ear and had hit his head on the concrete…The sound man is trying to save the camera…And then the army comes running down and the guy points the M-16. And I'm going, 'Periodista, no dispare,' which means, 'Journalist, don't shoot.' And I said, 'Por favor.' Please don't shoot…Then the guy lowered his gun and went away.'

Mother Jones points out that the footage O'Reilly's cameraman captured paints a less dramatic scene, with the most drama focused on a group of protesters banging up the car of a Canadian news crew.   

In his book, O'Reilly called the protests 'a major riot' in which 'many were killed' - though other outlets like the New York Times, the Miami Herald and UPI reported no fatalities. 

O'Reilly stands by his statement that 'many' were killed in the clashes - though he's not certain how many.   

'I have no idea. It was a long time ago. The Argentine government controlled the flow of information, Western reporters were not given access to morgues or hospitals. Anybody who was there can tell you that it was a chaotic mess,' he said.  

Mother Jones also called up O'Reilly's reports from El Salvador, where he traveled shortly after being hired as a reporter for CBS in 1981.

O'Reilly traveled to El Salvador in May 1982 to cover a civil war, and taped a segment in a village called Meanguera where the government claimed to have victoriously driven out a rebel group.

In his book, O'Reilly wrote that the village was 'leveled to the ground and fires were smoldering'. 

'But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead. There was absolutely nobody around who could tell us what happened. I quickly did a stand-up amid the rubble and we got the hell out of there,' he wrote. 

However, Mother Jones points out that his CBS segment was much tamer, showing just one or two burned buildings and several people walking around.

'That's false look at the footage,' O'Reilly has responded, again saying his video proved his point. 'The village was devastated.'  

In his book the No Spin Zone, O'Reilly wrote about visiting a village in El Salvador in 1982, which he said had been deserted and burned to the ground. But the footage he shot for CBS shows several buildings standing and people milling about