O'Reilly ignored Obama's disavowal of award granted to Farrakhan by daughter of Obama's pastor

On the January 21 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly repeatedly suggested that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) may be "hurt" by the news that Trumpet Newsmagazine, a publication founded by Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, of which Obama is a member, "gave an award" to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who, O'Reilly said, is "anti-Semitic in his rhetoric and sometimes anti-white or whatever." Yet at no point did O'Reilly mention that Obama recently released a statement disavowing the magazine's decision to honor Farrakhan.

As Media Matters for America has noted, after Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen noted on January 15 that Trumpet had given its 2007 Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan, the Obama campaign released a statement posted the same day on washingtonpost.com's The Trail blog, which read:

"I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. ... I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree."

O'Reilly also asked former Rock the Vote president Jehmu Greene whether Obama would be "hurt" by Wright's reported statement that, according to The New York Times, "the terrorist attacks of 9/11 ... were a consequence of violent American policies." But O'Reilly did not mention that the April 30, 2007, Times article to which he referred quoted Obama distancing himself from Wright's remark:

On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."

Such statements involve "a certain deeply embedded anti-Americanism," said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative group that studies religious issues and public policy. "A lot of people are going to say to Mr. Obama, are these your views?"

Mr. Obama says they are not.

"The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification," he said in a recent interview. He was not at Trinity the day Mr. Wright delivered his remarks shortly after the attacks, Mr. Obama said, but "it sounds like he was trying to be provocative."

"Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through," Mr. Obama said. "He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality."

From the January 21 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: How would you describe Dr. Wright's church?

HERMENE HARTMAN (N'DIGO magazine founder): It's a middle-class church. It is a superb church. Reverend Wright started a church with 87 people; today, has 8,000 in that particular congregation. United Church of Christ is basically a white denomination.

And I think there's been just a lot of miscasting here. Seventy ministries within the church, to include Girl Scouts, prison outreach, marital counseling, education, children's counseling, a lot of Adopt-A-School. They have done a lot to empower that community and to improve that community.

O'REILLY: OK. But you could make the same argument about Louis Farrakhan, that he's done, you know, some good things, yet you know, he's anti-Semitic in his rhetoric and sometimes anti-white or whatever. And --

HARTMAN: But that is -- that is not Jeremiah Wright.

O'REILLY: No, but it is association there. And the association, you can draw your own conclusion.

Now, I'm going to source all this stuff. In fact, I guess that Dr. Wright's daughter gave an award to Louis Farrakhan, according to The Washington Post. So, I'm going to source a lot of this stuff because I don't believe the mainstream media at all, Miss Greene. I think that they take things out of context all the time and -- particularly when Barack Obama is concerned. But -- so I'll source it and then you can give me your opinion.

This comes from the New York Times, 4/30/2007. Dr. Wright said the attacks on 9-11 were a "consequence of violent American policies." Now, I don't know whether he said that or not. The New York Times is saying he did. Is that going to hurt Barack Obama?

GREENE: Well, Bill, I think you're absolutely right that the media has their hooks out. The honeymoon is over for Senator Obama. He's going to have to start playing on the same stage that Senator Clinton has been doing for the past 12 years, and that means anyone who has advised him, anyone who he has ever done business with, anyone who Michelle Obama has done business with, they are all going to have to stand up to the scrutiny.

And I think, you know, some voters may be looking at that, as far as, we already know everything there is to know about the Clintons and everything they have in their closets. This is a new kid on the block. And, as he's doing well in these early states, the media is really going to take a much closer look at him --

O'REILLY: OK, but you dodged my question here.

GREENE: -- and this is just one example.

O'REILLY: If -- yeah. If The New York Times is reporting that Dr. Wright did say the attacks on 9-11 were the cause of American policy, and he also said, according to The New York Times, same day, that Zionism has an element of white racism.

These are explosive. These are very, very charged. Then you have the award that Dr. Wright's daughter gave to Louis Farrakhan. So, my question to you as a Democratic consultant is, is this going to hurt Senator Obama? Is it?

GREENE: Well, I think there's absolutely the possibility that it's going to hurt Senator Obama. I don't think any campaign staffer at Obama headquarters is happy that they're having to respond to the senator's name being put in the same sentence as Louis Farrakhan over and over and over because of his pastor.

O'REILLY: What do you think, Miss Hartman?

GREENE: And the thing is he really is going to have to answer --

HARTMAN: Well --

GREENE: -- as far as --

O'REILLY: All right. Let me get to Miss Hartman. Do you think it's going to hurt the senator?

HARTMAN: I think with -- I think that's the litmus test. I think whenever there is a black candidate running, the litmus test is Louis Farrakhan. We bring that up, and we -- and that becomes some kind of benchmark, some kind of judgment. And I think a lot of --

GREENE: But there has never been -- there has never been a black candidate like Senator Obama. So --

HARTMAN: That's true.

GREENE: I think it's not just --

HARTMAN: He's under another scrutiny.

GREENE: It's not going to just be this Louis -- it's not going to just be Farrakhan.

HARTMAN: But you --

GREENE: It's going to be everything he has out there. And thank goodness, he --

HARTMAN: I agree. And --

GREEN: -- did write his book and he has been upfront about it, but we're going to have to start taking a much closer look.

O'REILLY: Well, wait, wait, wait. I want to give Ms. Hartman the last word, because she knows the guy.

HARTMAN: But what -- what's the emphasis? I mean, you could also -- you know, it's the twist. It's the turn that's being taken. You could also look at a wonderful sermon that Dr. Wright gave and a book developed out of it, The Audacity of Hope.

O'REILLY: But you can't -- you can't do that, though.

HARTMAN: But we're -- but here's what -- you can do that if you wanted to do that.

O'REILLY: No, no, no, no. Because every despot --

HARTMAN: You could. Here's what -- but Bill --

O'REILLY: -- and I'm not calling the man a despot, but every despot in history has done some good things. Here -- look --

HARTMAN: But he's not a despot. Come on, Bill.

O'REILLY: No, I'm not -- I'm not calling him that.

HARTMAN: That's -- that's out of order.

O'REILLY: I made that clear. But the things that he has --

HARTMAN: Well, what are you saying?

O'REILLY: -- said are very, very troubling. And I think that Senator Obama -- if he's going to continue to associate with the doctor -- and he says he will --

HARTMAN: Obama is a -- is running against a political couple. That is what is going on now. And true enough, obviously he's got to be judged just like everybody else, but you've got to bring the truth. If you're going to do Obama's church, let's do everybody's church.

O'REILLY: All right.