CURRY CHANDLER
Staff writer
Don Imus’ nationally syndicated radio program “Imus in the Morning” was cancelled in April amid controversy surrounding comments he made about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Imus’ removal from the airwaves was generally held as a moral decision and a victory among black activists. If this is still the consensus opinion of Imus’ firing, and in the interest of consistency, then it must now be time for the same to happen to Bill O’Reilly.
Since 1996, O’Reilly has hosted the “O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News. The show is currently the top-rated cable news program, with 2 million viewers at the end of last month. He also hosts a radio show, “The Radio Factor,” syndicated nationally. On the Sept. 19 installment of the radio show, O’Reilly told a story about his dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem. In describing the experience, O’Reilly expressed genuine surprise over how civilized the restaurant’s other patrons were.
“I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City,” he said. “I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”
The progressive non-profit media Watchdog group Media Matters for America decried the comments as the latest in a “number of provocative statements about race” made by O’Reilly. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page addressed the issue in a Sept. 30 editorial. Page posits that the comments do not reveal O’Reilly as racist, but as racially ignorant.
Page astutely frames the debate as being over whether ignorance about race makes one a racist. He argues that it does not, and I agree; being ignorant about race does not equate to being racist. However, while Page believes that O’Reilly “deserves a break,” I believe his ignorance constitutes compelling grounds for his dismissal.
Mass media permeates every aspect of life in our society. The messages it conveys have the ability to reach and affect every member of the global community. The media’s highest calling and most important function is to educate the citizens of this country about how to live in a democracy.
The public and the media powers must exercise the utmost discernment when deciding who can wield the power of broadcast commentary. O’Reilly’s comments demonstrate that he is not deserving of the powerful platform he occupies. Why should our media outlets provide a venue for the “racially ignorant?”
After the Sylvia’s comments became a controversy, journalist Juan Williams met with O’Reilly. In a Time magazine article, “What Bill O’Reilly told me,” published Sept. 28, Williams described O’Reilly as concerned with the image of black Americans conveyed through media stereotypes that create negative misconceptions among white America. O’Reilly’s statements of ignorance constitute a perfect example of the negative effects of the media’s tendency to represent groups of people one dimensionally. The fact that O’Reilly expected to find gang members and gangster rappers in Sylvia’s is a testament to the effectiveness of the media’s skewed representation of entire groups of people.
O’Reilly’s racial ignorance betrays a weightier problem — racial arrogance. The underlying message in his comments about Sylvia’s patrons is that white Americans are the apex of civilization, a paragon to which all other races should aspire. This belief, along with his surprise that black people can eat at a restaurant the same as white people do, certify O’Reilly as undeserving of the significant influence he exhibits through the media.
10-04-2007
