O'Reilly Attacks Media Matters for Posting Harlem Remarks

Fox News Host Riled Over Exposure of Racially Charged Statements

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.

"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."

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.

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.' "

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.

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
  
  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.' "

• O'Reilly advocated profiling of all "Muslims between the ages of 16 and 45," but not "racial profiling"
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200608170006
  
  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."

• O'Reilly apparently finds it odd that Kansas murder suspect is a "white-bread guy"
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200706080005
  
  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?' "

• O'Reilly claimed to have exposed the "hidden agenda" behind the immigrant rights movement: "the browning of America"
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200604140009
  
  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.

• O'Reilly: "[T]he homies" in New Orleans aren't "going to get the [reconstruction] job[s]"
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200603010009
  
  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."

• O'Reilly: "Many, many, many" hurricane victims who failed to evacuate New Orleans are "drug-addicted ... thugs"
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200509150001
  
  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."

• 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
  
  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."

• O'Reilly: "[I]s there a 50 Cent that we have to put up" for Kwanzaa?
  http://mediamatters.org/items/200612210011
  
  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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