Fox News Outdoes Itself With a Ridiculously Racist Segment About Trump and Asians

“Do you know karate?”


Update, 3:01 p.m. EST: The Asian American Journalists Association has demanded an apology for the segment. “It’s 2016. We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race,” the organization wrote in a statement. “Sadly, Fox News proves it has a long way to go in reporting on communities of color in a respectful and fair manner.”

The “O’Reilly Factor” has offered regular racist news segments over the years, but this week, the reliably offensive Fox News show managed to outdo itself when correspondent Jesse Watters ventured down to New York City’s Chinatown to discuss Donald Trump and the 2016 election. The segment, which opens with stereotypical Chinese music, is spliced with movie clips featuring Asian actors speaking in exaggerated accents. Watters approaches a number of men and women in the street, some of them elderly residents who do not speak English. He then silently mocks them for their inability to answer his questions—many of which wander from the presidential race to lame caricatures of Asians masquerading as humor. 

“Is food in China just food?”

“Do you know karate?”

Toward the end of the clip, when O’Reilly said it appeared that most of the people understood the dynamics of the current election, Watters laughed: “You thought people knew what was going on?”

“They’re such a polite people,” he said, invoking yet another stereotype. “They won’t walk away or tell me to get out of here. They just sit there and don’t say nothing!”

The segment is actually painful to watch, but nonetheless provides an excellent example of why Asian American support for Republican candidates continues to erode.  

O’Reilly admitted there may be some people out there who might be offended by the reporter’s adventures in Chinatown, but Watters reassured him. It was, he said smiling, “all in good fun.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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