Cable news’ king asshat, Bill O’Reilly, recently took his vile rhetoric to a new level with a report aired on his show.
In a report assembled by Jesse Watters, composed of misleading quick cuts and venomous vitriol, the homeless population living at Penn Station in New York City were put on display for the swaths of misinformed and under-educated right wing cable news viewers. The report is disturbing, not just in its content, but also in the manner in which Watters marginalizes these men and women.
Here is the clip, from the June 29, 2015 episode of “The O’Reilly Factor”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZPwEggIfcY
Watters and O’Reilly have really outdone themselves this time.
I don’t know what it is about these two purveyors of journalistic f*ckery, but the clip speaks volumes to their endorsements and ideas surrounding the impoverished in the United States. Watters appears completely disinterested in homeless men and women he interviews. He rolls his eyes and keeps them from contact with the subjects of his asinine inquiry.
Also, note that all of the homeless men and women profiled in Watters’ “report” are black and most have substance abuse issues. After one of the women states she has been homeless since 2005, Watters?fails to ask “why,” but immediately cuts to another black woman whose homelessness can be linked to drug use.
Watters probes, asking “which drugs?”
“Crack,” the woman replies after a very quick, uneven cut.
“How do you make money?” asks the sniveling weasel.
“Prostitution.”
In a manner befitting Fox News’ brand of incognito racism, Watters questions several people within Penn Station about problems the homeless seem to be purveying. Aside from a young black girl asked if she ever feels “scared when [she] sees homeless people here,” Watters’ cast of commentators are interestingly devoid of black people.
Whether this is the intention Watters’ had or not, the visual aspects of the report are racially maligned. I mean, I don’t necessarily want to straight-up call Jesse Watters a racist; that would be libelous. But, if this report was all anyone had to go on…
Of course, it’s not like Bill O’Reilly and Jesse Watters are the model for ethics in journalism. After all, a group of high school journalism students had to school them in journalistic ethics following an “O’Reilly Factor” report about Vermont’s “overwhelming liberal bias.”
