Fox News Correspondent Goes To Chinatown, Produces Incredibly Racist Segment

Journalists Condemn Jesse Watters For O'Reilly Factor Segment: “The Most Offensive Television Segment I’ve Ever Seen”

Fox News’ Jesse Watters is drawing widespread condemnation for a segment on The O’Reilly Factor in which he visited New York’s Chinatown neighborhood to, according to Fox host Bill O’Reilly, “sample political opinion.” Since the episode aired, media figures have admonished Watters and O’Reilly for the “disgusting” and “anti-Asian” segment.

During the October 3 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly aired the “Chinatown edition” of “Watters’ World,” in which Watters interviewed several bystanders in New York’s Chinatown, asking questions such as, “Am I supposed to bow to say hello?" “Tell me what’s not made in China?” and “Do you know karate?” Watters also played the song “Kung Fu Fighting” in the background and included clips of him doing karate. But, as Vox puts it, “What Watters was really doing was making fun of the people he encountered with the broadest, dumbest Asian stereotypes imaginable — making it clear they were there as props for him and his viewers for what he clearly considered a hilarious joke, rather than to actually give their opinions.”

The segment was rebuked by numerous journalists on Twitter:

Watters’ racist segment is not the first time The O’Reilly Factor has stereotyped Asian-American or Asian people. O’Reilly himself once stated, “Asian-Americans have succeeded in the U.S.A. better than any other minority group. ... I’m saying there’s no white privilege; there must be Asian privilege because the Asians are at the top of the chart.” O’Reilly also asserted that “Asian people are not liberal, you know, by nature. They're usually more industrious and hard-working,” which prompted a demand for an apology from then-Rep. Collen Hanabusa (D-HI), who said O’Reilly’s comments “thoughtlessly insult 1.3 million people with one sweeping misstatement."