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NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2007
MEDIA
Bill O'Reilly's racial comment sparks controversy with critics
TV host says remarks taken out of context by 'corrupt media culture'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly appears on the Fox News show, "The O'Reilly Factor," on Jan. 18 in New York. After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, O'Reilly started a controversy when he told a radio audience he "couldn't get over the fact" that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia's and any other restaurant in New York.
BY DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEWYORK—FoxNewsChannel's Bill O'Reilly said Wednesday his critics took remarks he made about a famed Harlem restaurant out of context and "fabricated a racial controversy where none exists."
He criticized the liberal group Media Matters for America as "smear merchants" for publicizing statements he made on his radio show last week.
O'Reilly told his radio audience that he dined with civil rights activist Al Sharpton at Sylvia recently and "couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference" between the black-run restaurant and others in New York City.
O'Reilly told The Associated Press that Media Matters "cherry-picked" remarks out of a broader conversation about racial attitudes. He told listeners that his grandmother — and many other white Americans — feared blacks because they didn't know any and were swayed by violent images in black culture.
"If you listened to the full hour, you was a criticism of racism on the part of white Americans who are ignorant of the fact that there is no difference between white and black anymore", he told the AP. "Cicumstances may be different in their lives but we're all Americans. Anyone who would be offended by that conversation would have to be looking to be offended."
His radio show was a conversation with Fox News contributor Juan Williams, author of a book about the coarseness of some black culture. Williams defended O'Reilly during a Tuesday appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor"
"It's so frustrating," Williams said. "They want to shut you up. They want to shut up anybody who has an honest discussion about race."
The controversy was similar to
one that enveloped presidential candidate Joe Biden last winter. When Biden praised rival Barack Obama as "articulate" and "clean," many saw this as a way of conveying these were unusual characteristics for blacks.
Sylvia's manager Trenness Woods-Black told the New York Daily News that O'Reilly's remarks were "insulting" and showed he has little knowledge of the black community.
Karl Frisch, spokesman for Media Matters, said it was typical for O'Reilly to criticize his group for
merely reporting what he said.
"We didn't call him a racist," Frisch said. "We said his comments were ignorant and racially charged and we stand by that."
"This isn't about a racially insensitive remark," he said. "Anybody can listen to the unedited version of the conversation on billorell.com. You want to think I'm insensitive, you go right ahead."
O'Reilly said the Williams conversation carried on more than 400 radio stations and there wasn't one complaint from a listener.
The real story, he said, was about the "corrupt media culture" where outlets like CNN and MSNBC do stories about his remarks "because they're getting killed in the ratings."
"The O'Reilly Factor" is seen by more people — 2.2 million average this year — than its direct competitors on MSNBC and CNN combined. MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann averages 721,000 viewers in the time slot while CNN's 8 p.m. show averages 611,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.
NATION
Highway officials request less severe bridge safety labels
BY BRIAN BAKST ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. PAUL, Minn. — State highway officials around the country want
A bridge is typically labeled "structurally deficient" if regular
Control over the labeling system rests with Congress and the Federal Highway Administration, part of the Transportation Department. The department would not comment directly on the terms used to classify bridges' state of repair.
the government to stop scaring the public by using dire-sounding phrases such as "structurally deficient" and "fracture critical" to describe bridges in need of repairs
"People seem to think a bridge is within a hair's breadth of collapse when they hear these terms," Montana's chief transportation engineer Loran Frazier vented in an e-mail survey of his peers after the Interstate 35W disaster. "There seemed to be borderline hysteria regarding the bridges."
In interviews and government documents obtained by The Associated Press, some engineers said the terms were making America's bridges sound shakier than they really were, and they would prefer less-alarming phrases, or perhaps a "Health Index" for the nation's spans.
The issue came up after the Minneapolis bridge collapse Aug. 1 that killed 13 people. The span, along with more than 73,000 other U.S. bridges, was classified as structurally deficient, a term some engineers said sent shudders across the nation because it was widely misunderstood.
inspections uncover significant deterioration such as advanced cracking in concrete or steel components. The rating often leads to weight restrictions and increased monitoring and maintenance.
The term "functionally obsolete" is applied to bridges that don't meet current design standards, generally because of changing traffic demands. Bridges built decades ago, for instance, sometimes carry narrower shoulders or lower clearance than today's structures.
"Fracture critical" is applied to bridges without multiple backup features, meaning that if one critical component failed, the entire structure could give way.
The Interstate 35W bridge was rated both structurally deficient and fracture critical. The cause of the disaster is still under investigation.
Within days of the collapse, Rehm's association polled state transportation departments about their feelings toward the labels. Transportation officials from New Hampshire to Wyoming urged adoption of new terminology.
Gregory Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, an advocacy group for motorists, said he favored making the terms more understandable to the public and did not worry that a change would reduce pressure to spend more on bridges.
"Of course if they do that it could always come back and bite them," Cohen said. "Say they do start describing things in flowery terms and another bridge falls down, then they'll have egg all over their face."
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