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.
Please sign and add your voice -- and we'll demand a response from Fox News Channel.
Here's O'Reilly's record of misinformation:
If you want to be angry, try aiming at the leadership of Mexico.
Instead, we should show their lies to the world, so that the world can properly stop paying attention to them.
If all we do is petition O'Reilly to stop lying, then we'll have to sign petitions until he dies. However, if for every petition you would sign, we all go and show someone he was full of it, who didn't know before, we'll be able to eventually fix the problem permanently.
That's the only way I think he'd be capable of NOT lying.
At a rape awareness seminar, he blamed the raped and murdered victim for ber rape and murder!
Do not expect O'Rielly to do the right thing here , or ever.
Do you suggest we go down there and build nice little communities for them? Do you realize how hard AZ was hit by the current economic housing crisis? Arizonans have enough homeless citizens to try to care for, we cannot take on the burden of another country's problems.
These people drift north, bringing their living standards and their crime with them.
I think the law is insane, poorly written, and impossible to police. Jan Brewer makes Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar and I hope voters here are savvy enough to get rid of her this fall. I have my doubts.
I think in time you will come to realize that the law is not poorly written, in fact the whole problem for those who oppose it is that it is actually well written and can most probably stand
Brewer is brave - she is ready to be unpopular in order to do something that is right. She is willing to stand up for LEGAL CITIZENS AND OUR RIGHTS
Illegals do bring their third world living standards with them and they are bringing down the whole country.
It's the Federal Gov't that is derelict in their duties, they have completely ignored their responsibility to secure the border.
The time is now to SECURE THE BORDER AND DEPORT, DEPORT, DEPORT
You seem to know soooooo much about people in our country.
Well, I doubt it. Usually when he tells a lie, he keeps telling it at all opportunities, indefinitely, in keeping with his belief that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
Has he stopped lying in general?
We know the answer to that one. He lies for a living. And because lying is the truest expression of what he is as a man. He will never stop lying.