Where Is O'Reilly's Anti-Immigration Retraction?
NEW YORK—(ENEWSPF)—June 4, 2010. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly cited one reason to support Arizona’s harsh new anti-immigrant law: the state’s exploding crime rate.
As FAIR documented in a May 17 Action Alert, there is no such crime wave in the state. What's more, most research shows that immigrants tend to commit less crime than the population at large.
The day after the FAIR alert, O'Reilly (5/18/10) was still at it, declaring that "crime in Arizona is up." When his guest, Cathy Areu of Catalina magazine, pointed out that the El Paso "is one of the safest cities in the United States"-- proof that the presence of immigrants does not increase crime--O'Reilly replied: "That's a bunch of baloney."
He was wrong. El Paso is regularly ranked as one of the safest cities in the United States (L.A. Times, 5/13/10). In fact, border towns with heavy levels of immigration are among the safest cities in the U.S. (AP, 6/3/10).
On May 21, O'Reilly claimed that Arizona is "overrun with crime and everything else and people getting slaughtered on their ranches. I mean, it's insane."
But since then, O'Reilly's stopped making these false accusations. Maybe he saw the FAIR petition demanding that he stop. Or maybe he read the story in another Murdoch-owned news outlet, the Wall Street Journal (5/25/10), about how the newly released FBI crime statistics for 2009 show that the violent crime rate "plunged 16.6 percent in Phoenix, despite a perception of rising crime that has fueled an immigration backlash."
That false perception and backlash have been perpetrated by media figures like Bill O'Reilly.
Is this Fox's way of admitting a series of errors? If O'Reilly realized that he was wrong, then he should tell his viewers.
Over 2,500 activists have signed the petition to Fox News demanding that O'Reilly stop his immigrant crime slurs.
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FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
Source: commondreams.org
