It is worth noting that firing “rubber” (ok usually hard plastic bullets) looks and sounds pretty much like firing real bullets. Guns get pointed, they make a loud bang, people get hit and fall (and in some cases bleed). In some cases those struck die, just far less often than normal service rounds. Throw in hefty doses of chaos of crowd panic (from gunfire and CS) and it probably looked a lot like using deadly force to an untrained eye.
Most journalists don’t rate as trained eyes. Afterwards I would expect a good journalist to follow up and figure out what really happened. That part clearly didn’t happen.
Yes, it would be excusable to think they were firing live ammo at the time, and for the few hours before more accurate reports were obtained. But I don’t see how he couldn’t have learned the truth in the decades since then, nor do I see how he could have reported that people were killed, even at the time.
Just wondering — at the Kent State protests, people actually were shot and killed. Does anyone know of any reporter who covered that protest and later claimed “combat” or “war zone” experience?
I agree a good reporter should have figured it out but I could also see thinking people were killed at the time. Gunfire into a crowd, people falling, and not being that close to the action adds up. Throw in some blood (some “rubber” bullets can penetrate and the police were also using some more direct methods to wound.) I can easily see assumption that deaths were likely confirmed by erroneous “eyewitness” accounts producing an initial wrong report of deaths.
That still should have sorted out pretty quickly after the smoke, and CS clouds, cleared.
Thanks for the entertainment. One would think that a writer would know the definitions of the words he uses. Particularly one he uses in the headline and is the point of the “article”. Extra thanks for showing the kind of sophomoric mindless partisan drivel you think has value.
Are you trying to say that O’Reilly didn’t lie at all? Or just not about the Falklands or nuns in El Salvador? This isn’t particularly important, but why shouldn’t we take a look at O’Reilly’s record and see if and when he lied? So far, it’s been a lot of fun to watch (and that seems like reason enough!).
