The O’Reilly Factor’s Jesse Watters aired an “investigation” into homeless people in New York City’s Penn Station. It was so biased and unprofessional that those high school students who tore up Watters’ report on Vermont would have had a field day eviscerating the journalistic “ethics” in this one.
You knew what kind of “investigation” was coming when, during O’Reilly’s introduction, a photo of de Blasio was displayed above the text, “HARMING NEW YORK?”
The pretext was New York City’s efforts to rein in some police abuses - and O'Reilly's blatant effort to suggest that's making law-abiding (white) citizens unsafe. “Recent study found that 85% of New York City police now fear being proactive on the job and that manifests itself in a variety of ways,” O’Reilly claimed.
“Enter the busiest train depot in the country, Penn Station. In the past year, it has really gone downhill,” O’Reilly continued.
There were no experts interviewed, no police officers, no city officials, no Penn Station managers. Watters didn’t even cite any statistics or studies. Instead, he relied on a series of selectively edited, “man on the street” type interviews.
For example, Watters asked a Caucasian woman, “Does it affect you psychologically when you see homeless people in and out of this area?” An African American homeless person just happened to be in the background of the shot.
A Caucasian man told Watters, “I see the upswing. I see a lot more people basically living here. …In the stairwells, in the back areas.”
A young African American girl told Watters, “It’s kinda heartbreaking to see other people who don’t have houses. They don’t have money to buy food and it’s a possibility they could die from that.” Later, the same girl admitted the homeless scare her “because you never know what they could do.”
Watters told us that it’s forbidden in Penn Station to sleep on the floor or panhandle. But Watters couldn't be bothered to ask anyone in a position of authority why the rule seems to be disobeyed.
Instead, Watters asked a Hispanic man, “Technically, you are not allowed to loiter and panhandle. Are they enforcing that?”
The man responded, “I don’t think so. I really don’t see them moving them anywhere. You just saw a cop walk by and they didn’t talk to him. They don’t talk to any of those guys.”
And guess who just happened to be in the shot? A seemingly drunk African American man seen previously.
Now Watters actively demonized the homeless (African Americans) in Penn Station.
Watters asked one man what he was doing there. With slurred speech, the man said, “Nothing much, just picking up cans and bottles. …You make $20 a day.”
Watters asked a homeless woman (You guessed it! She’s African American too!) if she had any health insurance. “Oh, sure,” she replied. “They give you that when they give you welfare.”
Yet another woman (yup, African American) said she wound up homeless because of crack use – and now supports herself via prostitution.
There were also several anecdotes of people being attacked and accosted by homeless people. One (Caucasian) bar owner said someone picked up a chair and wanted to hit him over the head with it.
Later, it was time to blame the (too black-friendly) Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“There’s more homeless now than ever. I don’t know, I think it’s the Mayors fault,” some Caucasian guy opined.
Another white man said he has seen more homeless people since de Blasio became mayor. “I do try to help them out but at the same time I don’t like when they affect our customers,” he said.
There was even time for a shout out to Rudy Giuliani. The bar owner told Watters, “I’d say when Giuliani was mayor, I saw more enforcement.”
Back in the studio, O’Reilly groused that “De Blasio does not want to enforce what they call, ‘quality of life’ crimes, which is what this is.”
O'Reilly closed this shameful and shameless segment by saying “Good report.”
Watch it below, from the June 29, The O’Reilly Factor.
Claiming something like TYT really comes down to subjectivity (normally because of ideology). There’s no point in watching TYT comment because it will only frustrate me, causing me to “deconstruct” their video with a comment. They don’t have entertainment value in a satirical fashion, which is what Fox News is great at (Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Red Eye and all the comedians). Fox News claiming to be unbias isn’t too much of a joke compared to CNN and MSNBC , their thing is to let the hosts have their own uncensored views the only problem is almost all of their hosts are conservative. Fox News will take on any liberal voice which wishes to come on, but no liberal voices go (outside of comedians) because they know they don’t have an audience.
Saying I’m not a deep thinker isn’t a great defence of Bill de Blasio as mayor. Why did people joke about Bloomberg and his beverage laws (which never went through), yet under de Blasio “Manspreading” has become illegal on the subways. The filthy racist Giuliani cleared the subways of Graffiti, Saint de Blasio is ensuring they don’t have ball room.
Don’t be so easily offended, being an adult includes conversations with people you don’t agree with. Things might become uncomfortable, but don’t take things personally.
Also, I don’t need your lectures about what news sources to pay attention to. It’s Fox News that claims to be unbiased. TYT and Democracy Now do not. And, by the way, The Young Turks put together an excellent deconstruction of this segment. I’ll bet you didn’t even watch that discussion before calling me the fool.
And while I can respect someone not approving of Mayor de Blasio, calling him a “one term retard” is not at all the sign of a deep thinker.
So I will not be responding to you further.
Bill O’Reilly just had a controversy and wasn’t treated lightly by the media, if he was doing a “hit job” here then it’d be all over CNN, MSNBC, and let’s not forget those liberal satirical shows which broadcast out of New York City which are featured on Comedy Central.
Do agree with people because of their ideological background, Bill de Blasio is a one term retard who ruined the progress which resulted in the safest big city in America. Look at Baltimore, who do they try to blame regarding mayoral duty? Martin O’Malley, the dude who lowered the crime rates and successfully went on to become governor. Look at the people who followed him, what were their political ideals?
https://www.google.com/search?q=bill+o%27reilly+homeless&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
http://www.newshounds.us/the_young_turks_destroy_o_reilly_s_attempt_to_blame_homeless_on_de_blasio_070115
A simple Google search turns up plenty more.
http://www.newshounds.us/o_reilly_s_investigation_into_nyc_homeless_is_a_disgraceful_hit_job_on_the_poor_and_mayor_de_blasio_070115
But even if it were just us and Salon, that really doesn’t make the segment any better.
The elitists at this evil channel look down at poor people. And they call themselves Catholics! Ha!