Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly is enjoying a ratings surge since Mother Jones and other news outlets have accused him of exaggerating his experiences covering the Falklands War in Argentina in the 1980s and other major news events.
Deadline.com reports that "The O'Reilly Factor" on Tuesday night scored its biggest audience of 2015 — 3.3 million viewers. The figure represents an increase of 166 percent over the same night a year earlier.
Since Mother Jones' first story slamming O'Reilly for alleged discrepancies about his level of involvement in the Falklands, El Salvador and the Los Angeles riots, "The O'Reilly Factor" has seen a jump in viewers, according to Deadline.com, which reports that in the first full week following the first Mother Jones story — headlined Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem — O'Reilly's show saw a 25 percent increase.
"O'Reilly's ratings appears to be inversely related to the pelting he's undergone about claims he made regarding his involvement covering major news events in the past," according to Deadline.com.
"The O'Reilly Factor" trumped every other cable news show on March 3, according to
Mediaite, which reports that the prime-time show "was far and away the highest rated show of the night across all of cable news."
In comparison, CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC's Chris Hayes, both of whom compete with O'Reilly in the 8 p.m. time slot, had 530,000 and 767,000 viewers, respectively.
O'Reilly has skewered those who have questioned the veracity of his claims, saying to viewers that he never claimed to have reported from a war zone in the Falkland Islands, but that he covered protests of the conflict in Buenos Aires, according to a recent
New York Times story.
He also told viewers that he never claimed to have witnessed the murders of four American nuns during a civil war in El Salvador.
"While in El Salvador, reporters were shown horrendous images of violence that were never broadcast, including depictions of nuns who were murdered," O'Reilly said. "The mention of the nuns on my program came the day of the Newtown massacre [on Dec. 14, 2012]. The segment was about evil and how hard it is for folks to comprehend it.
"I used the murdered nuns as an example of that evil. That's what I am referring to when I say, 'I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.' No one could possibly take that segment as reporting on El Salvador."
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