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CNN Hero: Joshua Williams; Bill O'Reilly's Reporting Under Fire; Predictions of Sunday's Oscars

Aired February 20, 2015 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Time now for the five things to know for your new day.

Number one, Pentagon officials outlining a plan for Iraq's military to retake Mosul from ISIS militants. This spring offensive involves as many as 25,000 forces supported by U.S. air power.

The mayor of Venezuela's capital arrested amid accusations of a coup attempt against President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro says the mayor should be punished for his efforts to disturb the peace.

The Las Vegas teenager suspected of shooting a mother in a road rage incident was her neighbor. Erich Nowsch is facing three felony murder charges, including murder.

Prosecutors in the American sniper murder trial planning to call their medical experts to the stand. They will rebuilt defense testimony that Eddie Ray Routh was schizophrenic and showed signs of psychosis before killing Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield.

And a brutal record breaking deep freeze is moving east. Millions in its path. High temperatures will be 20 to 30 degrees below average in many of these states.

We're always updating the five things to know, so go to newdaycnn.com for the very latest.

Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, John.

Today, "CNN Heroes" recognizes a young man who found his calling at an age when most of us don't even know how to tie our shoes. When Joshua Williams learned there were almost 50 million people struggling to eat in this country, he decided to spring into action. And this 13-year- old hasn't slowed down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSHUA WILLIAMS: Start signing in people. Is everybody here signed in?

When I was four and a half years old, I found my purpose in life. We're going to help around 100 families. We're going to give them food.

Joshua's Heart Foundation has no age limit. As long as you're able to pick something up, just come out and help us make a difference.

Since I started, I have given out over 650,000 pounds of food to over 30,000 individuals.

Whew! Whew! Whew! Whew!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One tuna?

WILLIAMS: One tuna. We need enough for everybody.

Right now we have over 1,200 youth volunteers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Josh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Perfect.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm grateful to know there's still young people that cares for other people.

WILLIAMS: It's very important to develop connections and relationships with these people that we're helping.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: God bless you, you know. God bless you and thank you.

WILLIAMS: If you want to make a difference, I have three bits of advice for you. One, use your passion and purpose in life to help make a change in the community. Two, get your friends to help.

CROWD: One, two, three, heart!

WILLIAMS: And, three, never give up.

CROWD: Whew!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Great work by Joshua.

CUOMO: Right?

KEILAR: That's amazing.

CUOMO: He's so young but he's teaching us all the things we need to know. And, wow, what a great mission. We support you. We support you and we'll keep following you.

All right, we're going to take a break. Bill O'Reilly says he is ready to go to war. The question is, will that be the first time? A media outlet is saying O'Reilly misrepresented his war coverage likening it, if that's a word, to Brian Williams' problem. We have what O'Reilly said and we'll debate whether it should matter.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL O'REILLY: That's really separates me from most of these other bloviators (ph). I bloviate but, you know, I bloviate about stuff I've seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right, is that really the case? A simple question. Last night, "Mother Jones" magazine questioned whether Bill O'Reilly has a, quote, "Brain Williams problem," when it comes to his days covering the war in the '80s, particularly the Falkland Wars. The magazine claims O'Reilly said he was actually in the Falkland Islands, that he was actually experiencing the war and he was not. O'Reilly says he never said he was on the islands, rather that he covered this story from Buenos Aires.

So, who can we talk about this, with the right people, that's who. Daniel Schulman, the senior editor of "Mother Jones," and, of course, Brian Stelter, our CNN senior media correspondent, host of "Reliable Sources."

You think you've got this?

DANIEL SCHULMAN, SENIOR EDITOR, "MOTHER JONES": Do we think we have the story?

CUOMO: Yes.

SCHULMAN: Absolutely.

CUOMO: He didn't say Falklands in general? I'm going to play the opposition on this one. He didn't say, I was at the Falklands situation? Context doesn't say --

SCHULMAN: The story -- the story really speaks for itself. He's claimed to have been in a combat zone, in a war zone during the Falklands conflict. The only place combat took place during that war was in the remote Falkland Islands, which were 1,200 miles from Buenos Aires, where Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the press core is. The combat situation that he says he was involved in now actually was a very violent protest that took place after the war was over.

Now, it was violent, but this was not a combat situation. Bill O'Reilly has also claimed that the Argentinian troops opened fire on civilians and killed many people. We could find no evidence that people were killed and that soldiers opened fire on civilians. So that's another aspect of this.

And I'll tell you one more. He said that his colleagues at CBS at the time were cowering in their hotel and would not go out to cover this protest. Now, Bob Schieffer says that's not true. He was --

CUOMO: No coward, by the way.

SCHULMAN: No coward. So there's a number of elements to this.

CUOMO: All right. Or is it puffery? He built it up a little bit too much, big shots tend to do that, and you just hate Bill O'Reilly?

SCHULMAN: Absolutely not. It is puffery, though, yes. I mean I think he's, to some extent, inflating his experience covering wars. But the fact of the matter is, is that Bill O'Reilly has gone to dangerous places.

CUOMO: Right.

SCHULMAN: He has gone to Iraq.

CUOMO: Right.

SCHULMAN: He has gone to Afghanistan. He really doesn't need to embellish this stuff and suggest that perhaps he's been in firefights. And we've asked him about this. He said he's been shot at. He said he's been involved in covering firefights. He would not respond to our questions on that.

CUOMO: Because he doesn't like you.

Brian, let me ask you something, though. What do you think? I mean that's true, he doesn't like what the outlet does. He thinks you're coming after him.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, he did respond to eight or nine other outlets last night once your story went online.

CUOMO: That's right.

STELTER: They purposely ignored "Mother Jones" and then once the story came out, they went ahead and talked to a number of other outlets.

CUOMO: He's angry at you. He's not going to talk --

SCHULMAN: Sure.

STELTER: And they made it very personal. I think what's striking about O'Reilly's response is the anti-Brian Williams. Brian Williams apologized and went silent. O'Reilly started calling your colleague, David Corn, a gutter snipe, a piece of garbage, a liar, a left wing assassin. So I think O'Reilly was talking a lot less about your allegations and a lot more about the personalities involved here. I'd still like to hear more from him about why he was saying the phrase combat situation or war zone.

CUOMO: Do you give him the pass -- if he's in Buenos Aires and says I was covering the Falklands, is that good enough or do you wind up putting him to a different standard? And have we created a false standard with Brian Williams, let alone now with Bill O'Reilly?

STELTER: I don't think we've created a false standard. I think we're so -- seeing, all of a sudden, more scrutiny, as should be applied, to some of the most famous and important figures on television and in television news. O'Reilly could have said, I was at a violent protest. I've been in a violent situation. I've stared death in the face. He could have said all of that, if all of that is the case. But by talking about a war zone, by talking about a combat situation, he does open himself up to scrutiny here.

SCHULMAN: The fact is, he did cover the conflict and so did the other reporters who were there, but they didn't cast their experience as he did. And by the way, I had to look up what gutter snipe meant. I had no idea what that --

CUOMO: Well, bloviator isn't the best word to call himself either. I mean that suggests a little bit of an integrity problem all by itself.

But, look, what this comes down to, and Brian's been with us from the beginning on this. He's been all over it. I'm worried about going after people for everything they say and how they say it. I think that it creates -- like Brian Williams may be out of a job because of this. Do you think that that's a legitimate level of scrutiny to come after these guys on in the Falklands, at the Falklands? He's been at other wars. He's done things. You know, how harsh do we get in these situations?

SCHULMAN: We're journalists and it matters what we say and how we say them. We have to be as accurate as we can be. There's a lot of distrust about --

CUOMO: You know people have a tendency to pump up war experience. I don't like it. I'm always scared when I'm over there. But there's a currency of that in our business where, you know, it's like -- it's like pumping up the macho. I think a lot of people do this.

SCHULMAN: That's -- but that's offensive to the guys that are out there, the Dexter Filkinsens (ph) --

CUOMO: True.

SCHULMAN: The CJ Chiversis (ph), the James Foleys, those guys who are out there really putting everything on --

CUOMO: Got a lot of them at CNN.

SCHULMAN: Absolutely, who are putting everything on the line to bring back the story.

STELTER: And there's -- and there's -- and there's the same men and women at Fox who do it for Fox News as well, war correspondents who are out there. With O'Reilly, it seems like this was a credential for him. You know, it was something he could cite to say he had experience. And he did.

CUOMO: Yes.

STELTER: As you said, he had some experience in war zones and covering important conflicts over the years. But to go into that level of detail seems to have opened up the criticism. And, by the way, you know, I think this is something that started with Brian Williams and doesn't end with Brian Williams. To your point, Chris, you know, groups like Media Matters, which have been targeting O'Reilly for years are going to point out other examples of things they say that O'Reilly has also fibbed about over the years. So --

CUOMO: This matters more though. When you say stuff about war -- now that's the thing that caught me by surprise about Williams. When you lie about that, I think the sensitivity to the troops and everything else winds up playing into it. But Brian Williams, NBC ended up taking him off the air. You think Fox does anything to O'Reilly?

STELTER: I think Fox is a very different network than NBC. Fox is a network that -- well, look at the response. They immediately put O'Reilly on the phone with a bunch of reporters to attack this story. So they were on the offensive right away.

I also think they knew this was coming. I mean, this was something that was hidden in plain sight for a while. You all reached out to the other reporters in order to do the digging, in order to verify it. But people have thought for a while -- well, let's put it this way. If you don't like Bill O'Reilly, you've believed for years that he's been puffing up his resume.

CUOMO: So, low bar.

STELTER: So I'm not sure this will change as many people's minds, because Bill O'Reilly is a more polarizing figure.

CUOMO: Daniel Schulman, thank you very much for coming on to defend the reporting. Appreciate you, having here from "Mother Jones". Brian Stelter, you're part of the family. Always a pleasure.

We'll see what happens with this, John. It could go a lot of different ways. It could go no way. And you never want to wish anybody in the business ill, but we'll see how it plays out.

BERMAN: All right, thanks so much, Chris.

The red carpet is rolled out. The champagne is on ice. So who is taking home the big prizes at the Oscars on Sunday? We will have the experts' picks live from Hollywood next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: I'm going to do my best not to sing along to "Paparazzi" because I really want to. Welcome back to New Day. I'm Michaela Pereira live in Hollywood.

Forty-eight hours now. Celebrities will be getting ready for Hollywood's biggest night. The Oscars are Sunday. The season has mostly been predictable so far, but will Sunday bring any surprises? We have two people we can ask who know this stuff inside and out. Krista Smith, CNN entertainment commentator and senior West Coast editor of "Vanity Fair", and no pressure, Entertainment Tonight Nischelle Turner. She's also CNN contributor. Part of the family here. They join me live on the red carpet, which is covered in plastic for safety's sake because we don't want to spill our Starbucks on it.

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I feel like Michaela and the Mickettes with my mic.

PEREIRA: You might be.

Let's jump in to the predictions, because right off the bat we have to talk about the fact that a lot of these races this year for Oscar are tight. Some of them are going to be down to the wire. The one of all, the category, Best Picture, which I think is probably the most argued about category this year.

I want to put up the predictions that the two of you have because I think you're going to see something very interesting. Both of you chose the very same film.

TURNER: Great minds think alike, Krista.

PEREIRA: Krista, why did you pick this film as your best pick?

KRISTA SMITH, CNN ENTERTAINMENT COMMENTATOR: I just think it has -- it's a family movie. It just resonated with so many people. And I also think the sheer achievement of it, to shoot a movie over 12 years, the commitment that the directors make, that the actors make. You know, for two weeks every year, they went back to this project. And I just think it's the kind of thing that Hollywood loves. And they're so good, the actors, Richard Linklater, the director, Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette.

PEREIRA: Terrific performances.

TURNER: Yes, I love the journey of the film. And it was, it was the coming of age film. It was really, really good. It wasn't my favorite film of the year but I do think it will win --

PEREIRA: Your favorite film was?

TURNER: "Gone Girl". I know, I know. I loved it. I'm sorry.

PEREIRA: It's OK: I loved that book, too. Let's move on to actor. Here's an interesting category, too. It's a little different from Best Picture. A lot of great, great, great performances here, although there could be an upset.

Again, show the lady's picks. You were on the same page once again. You both picked Eddie Redmayne, "The Theory of Everything". A tremendous performance. Stephen Hawkin.

TURNER: Yes, he was brilliant, bottom line, in this film. But Pete Hammond was talking about this earlier in the show. Eddie has definitely been campaigning. And we don't see actors always do that, but I think he feels like, listen, I did a damn good job on this. I deserve this Oscar and I'm going to put myself out there for it. And I definitely think he does. He transformed into this. He was masterful into this. And you believed he was Stephen Hawking. And he also got Stephen Hawking's stamp of approval.

SMITH: That's true; he did.

PEREIRA: And, Krista, I say there are a lot of people that are thinking that maybe, maybe, maybe this actully could be Michael Keaton's to take away?

SMITH: It could be. I think this is the one -- it's a very crowded category. But I really think it's between these two guys. There is a little rumblings that Bradley Cooper could sneak in there for "American Sniper". But I think you watch the Guilds, you see where the awards shows leading up this. I really think it's going to be between Michael Keaton and Eddie.

TURNER: And I'm one of those flip-flopper. A month ago, I said Michael Keaton.

SMITH: Right, right.

TURNER: Hands down, Michael Keaton.

PEREIRA: You changed your tune now. Let's move on to Best Actress. And this could be her year. A lot of people are hoping --

SMITH: This will be her year.

PEREIRA: Because all three of us are kind of in the same boat here for Best Actress, Julianne Moore in "Still Alice", a beautiful film. Krista, why'd you love it, her performance, so much?

SMITH: Well, Julianne Moore, no matter what she's in, she's always good. And I feel like she could have won an Oscar any of the years she's been nominated. I just think this year all roads are pointing, the momentum is hers and she deserves it.

TURNER: Fifth time is the charm. It's her fifth nomination. She carried this film. I mean, yes, we saw Kristen Stewart, Alec Baldwin in it, we saw -- but this was Julianne Moore's film. It was about her. She was brilliant, masterful. This is her Oscar.

PEREIRA: OK, so we got the girls here. We can talk about it. Who are you most excited to see on the red carpet? We're on the red carpet.

TURNER: Julianne Moore!

(LAUGHTER)

PEREIRA: I was just about to say, she is Tom Ford's gal. This could be one of those days where she could just -- the golden light will be on her.

TURNER: Three years ago at the Emmys, she had this black and white Tom Ford dress on that I thought she -- it gave me chills, how beautiful she looked in that. I've been begging her, every time I see her, I say, please, please, please wear Tom Ford again. Please wear Tom Ford again. And so I hope she does come and I hope she wears a dress from here to Santa Monica. Because I want to see a train. I want to see her do it.

SMITH: Well, I agree with you, Nischelle. Julianne Moore is always a treat to see what she comes up with. But I want to see what Marion Cotillard is going to pull out, so lovely. And also Emma Stone. She, I feel like, is going to be playful and a lot of fun. This is her first Oscars.

PEREIRA: Well, speaking of first Oscars, it's also Neil Patrick Harris. We can't wait to see what he does. Wait for that, people; don't sleep on Neil Patrick Harris.

TURNER: My prediction: he's going to make someone disappear on stage. I'm serious.

PEREIRA: Krista Smith and Nischelle Turner, always a delight.

Let us know what you think about your picks for the Oscars. You can tweet us at @newday, go to facebook.com/newday and let us know what you're thinking. And also, plan for your Sunday. Join Don Lemon and I at 6:00 p.m. Eastern. Yes, I'm going to be taking care of Don Lemon. We're hosting "HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT: LIVE FROM THE RED CARPET" in all our glitz and glamor. 60 percent chance of rain. It's not going to rain on be my parade, I'll tell you that.

Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Mick. We've got a Good Stuff that will be right up your alley. This little boy has his heart broken. Nobody shows up to his birthday party. So what makes this the Good Stuff? You're about to find out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Time for the Good Stuff. 6-year-old Glenn Buratti, beautiful, autistic, has a 6th birthday party. Invites the whole class. You know the deal, right? Great. Wrong. Why? Nobody came.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEE BURATTI, GLENN'S MOM: Just to see the look on his face killed me inside.

(END VIDEO CLIIP)

CUOMO: Who are these other families that didn't show up? Glenn's mom says Glenn refused to smile for days. So where is the good stuff part of this? Here. The mom, so frustrated, puts the story on Facebook. The response -- amazing. Almost as soon as she posted it, dozens of total strangers and their kids started showing up with gifts. Not all. Fire department shows up. Sheriff's department pools money, buys gifts, and the best gift of all -- a flyover from the department's helicopter.

How good is that? With such a horrible beginning. Well, we're trying to -- the local affiliate that helped us with the

story, they tried to find out from the families. No good information was given. We still don't have those details about why they didn't go.

BERMAN: It's good stuff though.

CUOMO: But it is good stuff, how everyone stepped up. No? Good to you. Enjoy your sixth birthday, my man. We'll see you next year, Glenn. You're a good boy.

All right, a lot of news this morning. Let's get to you to the "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.

At least it has a nice ending.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that and Happy Friday. Have a great day.

KEILAR: Happy Friday, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thank you because, man, I'm glad it's Friday.

"NEWSROOM" starts now.