Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Media Buzz,” Bill O’Reilly blasted “coward,” Eric Engberg, his former CBS News colleague, for disputing O’Reilly war reporting in Argentina thirty years ago.
O’Reilly said it was payback for his criticism of Engberg’s practice of “bigfooting,” young reporters.
O’Reilly explained, “His [Engberg] reputation, his nickname was room service Eric, that he never left the hotel.”
When host Howard Kurtz asked, “Do you believe this criticism is personal?” O’Reilly said “Yeah, because in 1998, I laced him for bigfooting. Why don’t you tell the audience what big footing is, Howard.”
Kurtz explained, “Bigfooting is when a journalist such as yourself is covering a story and another better known journalist comes in and basically does either writes the article, does the stand up. I guess in your case, and you complained about this in a book, Bob Schrieffer came in and you left CBS afterwards.”
O’Reilly said it was akin to plagiarism adding “This is such a smear and it’s a coordinated smear.”
“They’re trying to impune my career and smear me. Nobody’s going to do that, okay. And if anybody contradicts what I have said, they need to come on my program and look me in the eye. Eric Engberg is a coward. OK he’s a coward. He could come on and say this didn’t happen, I was there,” he concluded.
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