- O'Reilly Attacks Media Matters For Posting Harlem Remarks
Fox News Host Riled Over Exposure of Racially Charged Statements
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- WASHINGTON, DC --
Yesterday, Rick Sanchez, host of CNN's Out in the Open, reported that Bill
O'Reilly attacked Media Matters for America for documenting racially charged
comments he made on his nationally syndicated radio program, calling it
a "hatchet job." The prominent conservative cable news and talk
radio host is furious that Media Matters has brought his damaging statements
to the public's attention yet again.
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- "O'Reilly's attack is hardly surprising. Without
fail, his automatic response to scrutiny of his ignorant comments has been
to attack the messenger," said Eric Burns, Chief Communications Strategist
at Media Matters for America. "O'Reilly is enraged that Media Matters
has once again shone the spotlight of public attention on his racially
charged remarks, holding him accountable for his own words."
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- Pursuant to its mission of comprehensively monitoring
and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media, Media Matters
simply posted O'Reilly's comments in context. Media Matters supplied the
audio of O'Reilly's statements, recorded directly from the broadcast, accompanied
by the relevant section of the transcript of the program.
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- Media Matters documented O'Reilly's racially insensitive
comments from the September 19 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor
with Bill O'Reilly. Discussing his recent dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton
at the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, O'Reilly stated that he "couldn't
get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant
and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same,
even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." O'Reilly
added: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer,
I want more iced tea.' "
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- In fact, this is not an isolated incident. As Media Matters
has documented, O'Reilly has a history of making racially charged remarks
on his radio and television programs.
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- Media Matters Items on O'Reilly and Race *
O'Reilly surprised "there was no difference" between Harlem
restaurant and other New York restaurants
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200709210007
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- Discussing his recent dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at
the Harlem restaurant Sylvia's, Bill O'Reilly reported that he "couldn't
get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant
and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same,
even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." O'Reilly
added: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer,
I want more iced tea.' "
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- * O'Reilly advocated profiling of all "Muslims
between the ages of 16 and 45," but not "racial profiling"
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200608170006
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- On the August 16 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,
host Bill O'Reilly argued extensively for "profiling of Muslims"
at airports, arguing that detaining all "Muslims between the ages
of 16 and 45" for questioning "isn't racial profiling,"
but "criminal profiling."
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- * O'Reilly apparently finds it odd that
Kansas murder suspect is a "white-bread guy"
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200706080005
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- On the June 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,
host Bill O'Reilly said of Edwin Roy Hall -- the man charged with murdering
18-year-old Kelsey Smith after abducting her from the parking lot of a
Target store in Overland Park, Kansas: "[T]his guy who is charged
has a child and a wife. You know, he's like white-bread guy. And we're
all going, 'What is that?' "
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- * O'Reilly claimed to have exposed the "hidden
agenda" behind the immigrant rights movement: "the browning of
America"
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200604140009
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- On his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly
claimed that on the April 11 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,
guest Charles Barron, a New York City councilman, had revealed the "hidden
agenda" behind the current immigration debate. O'Reilly told his listeners:
"[T]he bottom line is Charles Barron said last night is there is a
movement in this country to wipe out 'white privilege' and to have the
browning of America." But in the April 11 interview, Barron at no
point claimed that he and other advocates for immigrant rights are motivated
by a desire to force white Americans into the minority -- despite O'Reilly's
repeated efforts to provoke such an acknowledgment.
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- * O'Reilly: "[T]he homies" in
New Orleans aren't "going to get the [reconstruction] job[s]"
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200603010009
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- In a conversation with a caller about the disproportionately
few jobs and contracts that have gone to locals in the rebuilding of New
Orleans, Bill O'Reilly said: "[T]he homies, you know -- I mean, they're
just not going to get the job."
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- * O'Reilly: "Many, many, many"
hurricane victims who failed to evacuate New Orleans are "drug-addicted
... thugs"
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200509150001
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- On the September 13 broadcast of The Radio Factor, Fox
News host Bill O'Reilly claimed that "many of the poor in New Orleans"
did not evacuate the city before Hurricane Katrina because "[t]hey
were drug-addicted" and "weren't going to get turned off from
their source." O'Reilly added, "They were thugs."
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- * O'Reilly: Middle Easterners just want
to eat, smoke, "go to the mosques," and "sit around,"
but U.S. should stay in Iraq another year http://mediamatters.org/items/200709120008
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- During the September 10 edition of his nationally syndicated
radio show, Bill O'Reilly said that the United States should remain in
Iraq for at least another six months: "I think that this thing is
worth another six months in the sense that [Gen. David] Petraeus comes
in." O'Reilly also asserted that the "people of Iraq have said":
"[M]ost of us are either too afraid ... or too steeped in crazy religious
fanaticism that we'd rather kill people than have a country that runs in
an orderly way." He later added that "we cannot count on the
Muslim world to help us defeat the jihadists."
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- * O'Reilly: "[I]s there a 50 Cent that we have to
put up" for Kwanzaa? http://mediamatters.org/items/200612210011
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- Responding to a caller's assertion that no other "religious
symbol other than the Nativity should be put up during Christmas,"
Bill O'Reilly stated on the December 19 edition of Westwood One's The Radio
Factor that "if you're generous, you [should] put up all the symbols."
Continuing, O'Reilly asserted that "there's really only one [other]
symbol, and that's the menorah. There's no Kwanzaa symbol." O'Reilly,
presumably referring to the rapper 50 Cent, then asked if "there [was]
a 50 Cent that we have to put up" to honor Kwanzaa. He was later corrected
and told that there is "a Kwanzaa symbol," which he characterized
as "a candelabra like Liberace had." Kwanzaa is an African-American
and Pan-African holiday celebrated from December 26-January 1.
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- Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit,
progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively
monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the
U.S. media. Media Matters for America is the first organization to systematically
monitor the media for conservative misinformation every day, in real time.
For more information, visit www.mediamatters.org.
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- Contact - Karl Frisch 202 756-4109 kfrisch@mediamatters.org
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