Media Matters for America

Fox Adopts "It's Not Us, It's Them" Attitude; Lack of Accountability Speaks to Larger Problem with Fox News and Racially Charged Commentary

Washington, DC -- Fox News Channel's recent statement in response to the racially charged remarks made by Bill O'Reilly is emblematic of a larger problem -- the cable news channel's long record of racially divisive reporting and commentary, which belie its claims to be a respectable news organization.

In response to coverage of O'Reilly's shocking comments about his dining experience in Harlem, Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox News, released the following equally shocking statement, "This is nothing more than left wing outlets stirring up false racism accusations for ratings. It's sad."

Fox News' statement ignores the larger problem that comments like O'Reilly's present for the network's integrity, instead launching into an attack on rival news organizations.

"Fox News' response to the uproar over O'Reilly's statements sounds like spin you'd hear from a political campaign in damage control mode, not what you'd expect from a legitimate news organization," said Eric Burns, Chief Communications Strategist at Media Matters for America. "Their response resorts to a partisan attack, belying their claim to be a principled news source."

In fact, Fox's response clearly demonstrates that the problem is deeper than just O'Reilly. As Media Matters has repeatedly documented, these comments are part of a long history of racially divisive reporting and commentary. The dismissive response of Fox News executives to those who raise important questions about Fox's racially charged commentary and how it affects the integrity of their news coverage says more about the values of Fox News than anything else.

Media Matters items on Fox's racially divisive coverage:

From Bill O'Reilly:

On the June 7 edition of his Fox News television program, 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?' " (read full item here)

On the February 5 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, during a conversation about President Bush's description of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as "articulate," O'Reilly told Temple University education professor Marc Lamont Hill: "Instead of black and white Americans coming together, white Americans are terrified. They're terrified. Now we can't even say you're articulate? We can't even give you guys compliments because they may be taken as condescension?" Later in the segment, after Hill said that "we live in a world where black intelligence is called into question even at the highest levels," O'Reilly asserted: "[Y]ou're generalizing. Do you know how often my intelligence is called into question, Doctor?" Hill replied: "I can't imagine why, Bill." (read full item here)

Responding to a caller's assertion that no other "religious symbol other than the Nativity should be put up during Christmas," O'Reilly stated on the December 19, 2006, 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. (read full item here)

On the August 16, 2006, O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly argued extensively for the "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." (read full item here)

On the April 12, 2006, Radio Factor, O'Reilly claimed that on the previous day's broadcast, guest Charles Barron, a New York City councilman, had revealed the "hidden agenda" behind the current immigration debate, which, O'Reilly said, was "to wipe out 'white privilege' and to have the browning of America." O'Reilly suggested that this "hidden agenda" included plans to let "people who live in the Caribbean, people who live in Africa and Asia ... walk in and become citizens immediately." (read full item here)

On the March 30, 2006, broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly stated that "the mainstream African-American person" is "conservative at heart." O'Reilly defined such a person as "the person who goes to work, gets up, doesn't live in the ghetto, lives in a, you know, in a working class neighborhood or an affluent neighborhood." (read full item here)

In a February 27, 2006, conversation with a radio caller about the disproportionately few jobs and contracts that have gone to locals in the rebuilding of New Orleans, O'Reilly said: "[T]he homies, you know ... I mean, they're just not going to get the job." (read full item here)

On the October 4, 2005, edition of his radio show, O'Reilly equated trans-Atlantic Irish immigration in the 19th century to the historical enslavement of African-Americans and their forced removal from Africa. The Irish coming to the United States "had to leave the country, just as Africans had to leave -- African-Americans had to leave Africa and come over on a boat and try to make in the New World with nothing," O'Reilly said. (read full item here)

On the September 13, 2005, broadcast of The Radio Factor, 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." (read full item here)

Arguing that former President Bill Clinton failed to improve secondary education for African-Americans, O'Reilly told a June 3, 2004, O'Reilly Factor guest, "I see a worse black student dropout rate in 2000 than in '92." But the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sees it differently; NCES reported in 2003 that the dropout rate for black students ages 16 to 24 actually declined during the Clinton presidency. (read full item here)

A little more than a month after Media Matters corrected O'Reilly's false claim that "I see a worse black student dropout rate in 2000 than in '92," O'Reilly repeated the claim, this time on his nationally syndicated radio show, the July 7, 2004, broadcast of The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly. (read full item here)

During the July 21, 2004, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly modified a falsehood he had repeated twice before about the dropout rate for black high school students. O'Reilly's modification came nearly two weeks after Media Matters documented the second instance of his misinformation. (read full item here)

On the October 19, 2004, broadcast of The Radio Factor, O'Reilly attempted to explain a Washington Post poll, which he said showed less support for President Bush among African-Americans than two other polls, by noting that the poll is "coming out of a very heavily black district where there is an enormous amount of poverty in Washington." (read full item here)

From John Gibson:

During the September 21 broadcast of his nationally syndicated Fox News Radio show, while discussing recent events surrounding the so-called Jena Six with the show's executive producer, known on air as "Angry Rich," John Gibson asserted that the demonstrators who gathered last week in Jena, Louisiana, only "wanna fight the white devil." Gibson said: "[W]hat they're worried about is a mirage of 1950s-style American segregation, racism from the South. They wanna fight the white devil. ... [T]here's no -- can't go fight the black devil. Black devils stalking their streets every night gunning down their own people -- can't go fight that. That would be snitchin'." (read full item here)

During the June 1 edition of his radio program, Gibson responded to posts on Media Matters and Think Progress about his comment on the May 31 edition of Fox News' The Big Story that "every time a story pops up about somebody who has suddenly contracted some strange or incurable disease, it's somebody who is either from the third world, or was traveling through some godforsaken hellhole, and somehow managed to contract ooga booga fever." Gibson responded: "Well, the whitest man in America, who is the black man's best friend, is now being alleged to be a racist for having invented something called ooga booga fever." (read full item here)

On the May 31 edition of The Big Story, Gibson said he was "mesmerized" by what he called "[t]he TB Man story" -- the recent news that American attorney Andrew Speaker traveled by airline while infected with antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Gibson stated: "It seems every time a story pops up about somebody who has suddenly contracted some strange or incurable disease, it's somebody who is either from the third world, or was traveling through some godforsaken hellhole, and somehow managed to contract ooga booga fever." (read full item here)

On the April 23 broadcast of his Fox News Radio show, Gibson argued that the Iraqi people -- whom he described as "knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century" -- are at "fault" for the situation in Iraq. (read full item here)

On the May 11, 2006 edition of The Big Story, Gibson urged viewers to "[d]o your duty. Make more babies," because he had found out, from a recently released report, that nearly half of all children under the age of five in the United States are minorities. Gibson added: "You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic." Gibson later repeated: "To put it bluntly, we need more babies." (read full item here)

From Neil Cavuto, who Fox has announced will anchor the new Fox Business Channel.

On the April 12 edition of Fox News' Your World, while discussing the controversy surrounding radio host Don Imus' recent remarks, host Neil Cavuto asked rapper M-1, one half of the group Dead Prez, "[A] ho is a ho, right?" Cavuto added: "So, if Imus uses the expression and then you use the expression, you've both said 'ho.' " He later said, "So, there's nothing wrong with Imus saying it, right?" On the April 4 edition of Imus in the Morning, which was then produced by CBS Radio and simulcast on MSNBC, Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." (read full item here)

From Sean Hannity and Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

On the July 25 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity previewed a discussion of plans to operate an Arabic language and culture school in Brooklyn, New York, by saying that "if you live in New York City, guess what? Your tax dollars could be going to fund a madrassa," and that "the city that fell victim to the biggest terrorist attack in world history challenges the separation of church and state and using tax dollars to fund an all-Muslim school." (read full item here)

On the June 26 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Hannity again accused Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright -- pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ, which Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attends -- of holding "these black-separatist views, about the Black Value System." Following a trend from previous shows, Hannity did not mention Wright's explicit denial on the March 1 edition of Hannity & Colmes that his church embraces separatism. (read full item here)

Former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Mark Fuhrman appeared as a guest on the June 23, 2004, edition of Hannity & Colmes to discuss the videotaped beating of an African American man by white police officers in Los Angeles that, according to the Los Angeles Times, has been "described by a top [Los Angeles Police] department official as 'Rodney King-esque.' " Fuhrman, who since leaving the LAPD has become an author, was discredited for his role in the O.J. Simpson murder trial; after he had retired from the LAPD, Fuhrman pleaded no contest to a perjury charge in which he was accused of lying under oath about using a racial slur against African-Americans. (read full item here)

From guests and commentators on Fox News programs:

On the April 12 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, guest host and Fox News analyst Michelle Malkin discussed with black talk-show host Opio Sokoni the decisions by MSNBC and CBS Radio to cancel their broadcasts of Imus in the Morning after host Don Imus referred to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." Malkin accused the media and civil rights leaders of a "[d]ouble standard" and asked whether Imus' remark wasn't "a drop in the ocean compared to the filth on music and radio and hip-hop stations every day." After Sokoni said that those making money from hip-hop music are "[w]hite people that you coddle to in almost all your articles," Malkin responded: "Oh, geez. Here we go with the 'blame whitey' again. Blame whitey." Malkin added: "Whose mouths are the words coming out of? So, Snoop Dogg doesn't bear any responsibility for spreading this filth? And Young Jeezy, and Crime Mob and all these people, they don't bear responsibility? It's all whitey's fault?" (read full item here)

Commenting on the June 23, 2006, edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, private investigator Bo Dietl argued that the arrest in Miami of seven men on charges of conspiracy, which allegedly included plans to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago, illustrates that "we can't go off ... where we are going with [racial] profiling." Dietl referred to the men as a "crew of mutts" and stated that law enforcement officials should "[g]o into your 7-Elevens or go into one of these stores that keep rotating young men who are Muslims," and say "identify yourself." (read full item here)

In her December 9, 2004, nationally syndicated column, titled "The new and improved racism," and as a guest on the December 8 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter continued to accuse liberal and Democratic journalists and politicians of racism for criticizing black conservatives. Coulter also attacked "black liberals," specifically New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert and Times media critic Caryn James, for "launching racist attacks on black conservatives." James, however, is white. (read full item here)

Appearing on Hannity & Colmes on July 13, 2004, Kevin Martin -- an environmental contractor and member of the conservative African American group Project 21 -- compared the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to the Ku Klux Klan. (read full item here)

Belittling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and citing misleading poll data, Fox News guest Robert L. Woodson Sr., founder and president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, vigorously defended President Bush's decision to reject his fourth consecutive invitation to speak at the NAACP's annual convention on the July 15, 2004, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume. Woodson falsely claimed that "83 percent of blacks no longer look to the NAACP for leadership," when in fact, polls show that black Americans hold the NAACP in high esteem. (read full item here)

While discussing Rev. Jesse Jackson's efforts to investigate failures in Ohio's presidential election voting process, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson attacked Jackson and other liberals for trying to "keep black Americans angry in order to keep them on the plantation of the Democratic Party." In addition to condemning liberals as "racist towards black Americans," Peterson also falsely claimed that no blacks were disenfranchised in the 2000 election and erroneously suggested that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) supported reparations for slavery in the 2004 presidential campaign. Peterson's comments came during an appearance on the November 29, 2004, edition of Hannity & Colmes. (read full item here)

African-American elected official mix-ups:

During the June 4 edition of The Live Desk, Fox News showed footage of Rep. John Conyers while Brian Wilson reported on the expected indictment of Rep. William Jefferson. (read full item here)

Fox News made a similar mistake during the November 6, 2006, edition of The Live Desk when they aired footage of Harold Ford Jr. while discussing Sen. Barack Obama. (read full item here)

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Fox's Race Problem: It's Not Just O'Reilly