Fox News suffers ferocious backlash over ‘racist’ segment shot in New York’s Chinatown
Reporter criticised for promoting Asian American stereotypes during segment on The O’Reilly Factor
Watchdog and activist groups are outraged by a Fox News Channel segment in which an interviewer asked people in New York’s Chinatown if he was supposed to bow to greet them, if they were selling stolen goods and if they could “take care of North Korea for us”.
Several organisations condemned humorist Jesse Watters’ piece on The O’Reilly Factor, calling it racist and demeaning to Asian Americans.
We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation
“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,” Asian American Journalists Association President Paul Cheung said in a letter to Fox and posted online.
Cheung called on Fox to apologise to the Asian American community and asked for “an explanation for how this type of coverage will be prevented in the future.”
Watters asked people on the street about the presidential race, sought a demonstration of karate and showed footage of him getting a pedicure.
At one point in Monday’s nearly five-minute segment, an elderly woman’s silence in response to a query was paired with a clip from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein in which Madeline Kahn shouts, “Speak, speak, why don’t you speak?!”
Gregory A. Cendana, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, criticised the report. The coverage, including making “fun” of the Chinese elder, “played into the exoticisation and status of perpetual foreigner” of the Asian American community, Cendana said.