Rieder: Why the Bill O'Reilly flap matters

So is this flap over whether Bill O'Reilly set foot in a "war zone" in an obscure conflict many years ago that hardly anyone remembers worth all this attention?

There is a school of thought that would answer the question with an emphatic "no."

According to this point of view, O'Reilly is a talk show host with a clearly defined point of view, not a true journalist. He shouldn't be held to the same standards as someone like embattled NBC anchor Brian Williams, whose embellished claims about his own "war zone" experiences netted him a six-month suspension without pay. Besides. does Fox News, where O'Reilly works his magic, have any credibility anyway?

Then there's the argument that the flap simply plays into the hands of O'Reilly and Fox. Their very successful brands rest in part on the notion that that they are the counterweight to that dreaded liberal media, which simply can't be trusted. Their base is unlikely to be troubled by the controversy and may even be fired up by it.

The estimable Jon Stewart gave voice to the "who really cares about this?" take on The Daily Show Tuesday night. Basically, Stewart's view is that spinning is pretty much what O'Reilly does for a living in his alleged "No-Spin Zone." As for Fox, Stewart said, "No one is watching them for the actual truth."

Much as I respect Stewart, though, I'm not with him on this one, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the truth is the truth. It matters. And there's no real argument on the question of whether O'Reilly was in the actual Falklands "war zone." Everyone, including O'Reilly, agrees he wasn't, his repeated claims that he was there to the contrary. No American correspondents got to those remote islands, only British journos brought there by the British armed forces. (The bizarre little war was waged by the United Kingdom and Argentina, in case you are at home scoring.)

O'Reilly says he meant that he covered the war in general — from Buenos Aires, 1,200 miles way, like everybody else. There, he was caught up covering violent protests. Many have come forward to dispute just how violent the protests were. But it doesn't really matter. A war zone is a war zone, and a riot scene isn't. End of story.

And, yes, O'Reilly's role is different from that of Brian Williams. When Williams told his now-recanted tale, both on Letterman and on the Nightly News, of being in a helicopter that took fire during the Iraq War and was forced out of the sky, he was the anchor of the nation's most-watched newscast. Clearly a journalistic position, and an important one.

O'Reilly's role is something very different. He is the king of cable talk, a host, a commentator, a pundit on a network with a sharp point of view. And something of an entertainer as well.

But he is the dominant personality on the nation's dominant cable news channel. He is part of the political conversation. He calls out people for their transgressions. No way should he be immune from the same treatment.

And maybe his base won't care, will dismiss the issue as a partisan attack on its hero. That's also beside the point. There are all kinds of investigations launched with absolutely no guarantee that, even if they bear fruit, they will have real-world impact. You find the facts and see where they lead.

But there's another reason why the kerfuffle deserves scrutiny, and that's O'Reilly's scorched-earth response to the allegations. From the jump, O'Reilly's approach has been to try to shift the focus to his accusers, in a decidedly ugly way. The whole thing, he maintains, is simply a partisan effort to damage him and damage Fox.

O'Reilly denounced one of the authors of the Mother Jones article that raised the issue, David Corn, as a "guttersnipe liar" and a "disgusting piece of garbage." He called CNN's Brian Stelter, who was reporting on the brouhaha, "a far-left zealot masquerading as a journalist." Then he upped the ante. New York Times reporter Emily Steel tweeted Monday that O'Reilly told her that if he felt there was anything off base in her story, "I am coming after you with everything I have," and "You can take it as a threat."

Sure, this is vintage O'Reilly. It's what he does: Huff and puff and blow down his foes. But that doesn't make it OK. This kind of behavior — ridiculous name-calling and threats to reporters doing their jobs — needs to be challenged.

O'Reilly said on The O'Reilly Factor Monday night, "I want to stop this now," as if, unlike everybody else, unlike all of his targets, he were somehow above scrutiny.

He's not.