Footage newly uncovered by Mother Jones suggests that Bill O'Reilly's claim that he covered a protest in Argentina in which “many were killed” with “real bullets” is a fabrication. In the footage, which is O'Reilly's own report for CBS News from the violent incident in question, the Fox News host makes no mention of anyone dying and describes police using “tear gas,” not live ammunition.

On February 19, Mother Jones wrote that O'Reilly had never reported from “a war zone, in Argentina, in the Falklands” as he's said in the past. O'Reilly responded by claiming that when he had said he reported from a “war zone,” he was specifically describing a 1982 Buenos Aires protest which broke out after Argentina surrendered in the War.

O'Reilly has frequently hyped the violence at that protest to emphasize his own reporting bona fides, going so far as to call it a "combat situation." For example, O'Reilly claimed in a 2009 interview that during the riot the army shot at protesters with “real bullets,” not “tear gas”:

When the riots broke out in the Casa Rosada ... the army was standing between the people and the presidential palace. Here in the United States, we would do tear gas and rubber bullets. They were doing real bullets. They were just gunning these people down, shooting them down in the streets. 

In his book The No Spin Zone, O'Reilly also described the protest, writing “A major riot ensued and many were killed.” And on his now-defunct radio show, O'Reilly claimed:

I was in the middle of that riot when Argentine soldiers came out of the barracks and got into the streets and actually shot people dead in the street, because people were rioting. And it wasn't like warning shots or rubber bullets or teargas. They were shooting people dead.

Many of O'Reilly's former colleagues who reported from the same protest, as well as reporters from other outlets and an Argentine historian, have contradicted his claim that there were fatalities.

Mother Jones has since unearthed O'Reilly's own report from the scene, which makes no mention of live ammunition or deaths. Filed with his then-employer CBS News, O'Reilly's voice can be heard over footage of the protest specifically reporting that “police struck back, firing tear gas and rushing the crowd.” He notes “some journalists” got hurt, but describes the incident as a “disturbance” and does not mention anyone dying.

According to Mother Jones, O'Reilly's report aired on local CBS affiliates at the time.

O'Reilly initially responded to criticism about his fabrications and exaggerations about his journalistic exploits by attacking his critics as partisan, but he and Fox News have largely fallen silent as evidence mounts against several of his tales.