Frank Sesno: O'Reilly-MotherJones-Eric Engberg Battle Is an 'On The Record Food Fight'
CUOMO: All right, Frank Sesno, you are known for your fairness. You are known for how you do your job as a journalist. But, today, you present the perspective of what is wrong with this. And I will push back from the perspective of what O'Reilly's defense is of it. Please, begin, what is wrong here? FRANK SESNO, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNVIERSITY: First of all, what is wrong here is that we're in a season where we're taking a look at what people have said thanks to Brian Williams, and a hard look at what Mr. O'Reilly said raises questions about whether he embellished. The words "in the Falklands" may have been passing words on his part, but were not where he and Enberg or I, because I covered that that conflict as well, ever were. We were in Buenos Aires. Now, Bill now says well, that's where I was all along, but his words, were they embellishments, indicated perhaps otherwise. He also talked about, in another clip that Brian Stelter ran yesterday on "RELIABLE SOURCES" talked about firing troops into the crowd and people dropping. And as we heard there just a moment ago, and as I can tell you, there were no stories of sort of massacres in the streets of Buenos Aires. That was a difficult area, and sometimes tense, but BA was not a war zone itself. CUOMO: O'Reilly says protests are very dynamic things. What I see where I am may not be what you see from where you are. And these other guys from CBS didn't see it because they didn't leave. Only I did. And I saw what I saw and my cameraman was hurt and it was combat by any other name because you had opposing forces trying to kill one another. SESNO: Well, what we also have going on here, Chris, which is really interesting and has not happened with the Brian Williams case, is we have an on the record food fight, where you have varying points of view from within the CBS family. And what Engberg told Brian yesterday was I was there; I was on the streets. I didn't see any of this. When O'Reilly came back, O'Reilly didn't want to share his tape and he got slapped by the producer, the CBS producer at the time. So there's a lot of stuff here that actually now can be tracked down. I would tell you the bottom line for this, as far as the audience should be concerned, and as far as the industry should be concerned, is what actually happened? And it's not that hard to really pin it down. And will people be held accountable to their words? "THIS VIDEO IS FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW BECAUSE IT IS (1) NON-COMMERCIAL, (2) TRANSFORMATIVE IN NATURE, (3) USES NO MORE OF THE ORIGINAL WORK THAN NECESSARY FOR THE VIDEO'S PURPOSE, AND (4) DOES NOT COMPETE WITH THE ORIGINAL WORK AND COULD HAVE NO NEGATIVE AFFECT ON ITS MARKET."
CUOMO: All right, Frank Sesno, you are known for your fairness. You are known for how you do your job as a journalist. But, today, you present the perspective of what is wrong with this. And I will push back from the perspective of what O'Reilly's defense is of it. Please, begin, what is wrong here? FRANK SESNO, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNVIERSITY: First of all, what is wrong here is that we're in a season where we're taking a look at what people have said thanks to Brian Williams, and a hard look at what Mr. O'Reilly said raises questions about whether he embellished. The words "in the Falklands" may have been passing words on his part, but were not where he and Enberg or I, because I covered that that conflict as well, ever were. We were in Buenos Aires. Now, Bill now says well, that's where I was all along, but his words, were they embellishments, indicated perhaps otherwise. He also talked about, in another clip that Brian Stelter ran yesterday on "RELIABLE SOURCES" talked about firing troops into the crowd and people dropping. And as we heard there just a moment ago, and as I can tell you, there were no stories of sort of massacres in the streets of Buenos Aires. That was a difficult area, and sometimes tense, but BA was not a war zone itself. CUOMO: O'Reilly says protests are very dynamic things. What I see where I am may not be what you see from where you are. And these other guys from CBS didn't see it because they didn't leave. Only I did. And I saw what I saw and my cameraman was hurt and it was combat by any other name because you had opposing forces trying to kill one another. SESNO: Well, what we also have going on here, Chris, which is really interesting and has not happened with the Brian Williams case, is we have an on the record food fight, where you have varying points of view from within the CBS family. And what Engberg told Brian yesterday was I was there; I was on the streets. I didn't see any of this. When O'Reilly came back, O'Reilly didn't want to share his tape and he got slapped by the producer, the CBS producer at the time. So there's a lot of stuff here that actually now can be tracked down. I would tell you the bottom line for this, as far as the audience should be concerned, and as far as the industry should be concerned, is what actually happened? And it's not that hard to really pin it down. And will people be held accountable to their words? "THIS VIDEO IS FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW BECAUSE IT IS (1) NON-COMMERCIAL, (2) TRANSFORMATIVE IN NATURE, (3) USES NO MORE OF THE ORIGINAL WORK THAN NECESSARY FOR THE VIDEO'S PURPOSE, AND (4) DOES NOT COMPETE WITH THE ORIGINAL WORK AND COULD HAVE NO NEGATIVE AFFECT ON ITS MARKET."