Bill O’Reilly is not one to keep his mouth closed and cable’s highest-rated talk show host certainly had a lot to say about the Baltimore riots on his show Tuesday evening.
“I mean, who is going to invest or start a business in the poor precincts of Baltimore? Who? That means that good jobs will not come to those neighborhoods. So the big loser in the Baltimore riots are those that live in the poor neighborhoods, primarily African-Americans. These idiotic thugs rioting and looting are hurting their own people. And because the entire world sees pictures of blacks rampaging, all African-Americans are affected.”
In the same segment, Bill O’Reilly indicated that whites simply can’t be blamed for the problems of African-Americans in Baltimore.
“In Baltimore, the situation is dire. Sixty-three percent of the population is African-American. The unemployment rate: 8.4 percent. And blacks control the city. There is a black mayor; nine of the city council members are black, only six are white. So African-Americans are calling most of the shots. Despite that, 24 percent of Baltimore residents live below the poverty line.”
Bill O’Reilly has been one of the leading news figures in covering riots over the past year. Last August, he was harshly criticized for dismissing the Ferguson protestors by claiming they were not looking for justice. The Raw Story ran a report on O’Reilly’s Ferguson analysis .
“Fox News host Bill O’Reilly criticized protesters in Ferguson, Missouri on Monday night and minimized fatal police shootings against Black men during a phone interview with guest host Eric Bolling…O’Reilly argued that, according to FBI statistics from 2012, the yearly ratio of 420 fatal police shootings compared to 12 million arrests defused charges that police unfairly targeted the Black community.”
Last December, the Huffington Post reported on a debate between Bill O’Reilly and hip hop mogul Russell Simmons .
“Bill O’Reilly got in a heated argument with hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons Wednesday night over the recent decisions by grand juries in the United States not to indict white police officers for the killings of unarmed black men. Following the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, Simmons has spoken out to condemn the grand jury verdicts, comparing them to lightning striking the black community over and over and over again. O’Reilly, however, felt Simmons was missing the point.”
Bill O’Reilly told Simmons that police are not going around targeting black people in general – it’s a myth that the media has been creating. Of course, Mr. O’Reilly was then criticized again for allegedly being racist. Whatever you think of Bill O’Reilly, one can’t deny his influence as he still has the highest rated show on cable television.
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