News
2007-07-27
O'Reilly
apologizes for overstating lesbian gang threat
O'Reilly
backpedals on lesbian gang report
Fox News host
Bill O'Reilly has apologized on the
Fox News host
Bill O'Reilly has apologized on the air for errors in a
widely criticized June 21 segment that reported a
"nationwide epidemic" of violent lesbian gangs
terrorizing neighborhoods and schools.
"We overstated
the extent of gay gangs in the Washington area," the
O'Reilly Factor host said on his show as
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation spokesman Rashad
Robinson stood by on a split screen. "Detective
Wheeler has apologized," he added, referring to Fox
crime analyst Rod Wheeler.
"Thank you for
correcting the record," Robinson said.
The exchange
disintegrated, however, as O'Reilly went on to explain how
the story came into being: He had seen a story in which
several New Jersey lesbians attacked a man who spat on
one of them when she spurned his attentions. Four of
the women were ultimately convicted in the August 18
incident.
"They were never
identified as being in a gang. Gang charges were
dropped." Robinson said.
"They were a
pack of lesbians who jumped this guy," O'Reilly
said. Soon after, he said, he saw tape on a "gang" in
Memphis.
"There was no
criminal activity," Robinson said.
"And a gang in
Philly."
"They were
eighth-graders," Robinson said.
"We got three. We
put our guy [Wheeler] on it. I'm just trying to tell
you how we got on this."
"You called it a
nationwide epidemic," Robinson told him.
"I got a little
carried away with that," O'Reilly said.
Gay and
progressive media-watchers had pounced on the report, as had
the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.,
one of America's leading civil rights groups.
They noted that
the Philadelphia segment was three years old, the Memphis
segment did not produce any evidence of illegal activity,
and that in some of the video re-aired by O'Reilly the
girl hooligans were actually fighting over men.
Washington,
D.C.–area law enforcement said the report was
simply inaccurate. "We have 150 to 175 total gangs in
the D.C. area, and out of those, only nine where the
predominance of members are female," said Sgt. Brett
Parson of the police department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison
Unit.
"You simply can't
make the jump that they are lesbians. I think it is
fair to talk about violence and female gangs. But to
sensationalize or marginalize a community by making a
statement like that seems irresponsible," Parson said.
"There is no
evidence whatsoever of a lesbian gang epidemic in this
region…. Our membership reports only one lesbian
gang," Gaithersburg, Md., police detective Patrick
Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang
Investigators Network, told the rights group. (Barbara
Wilcox, The Advocate)
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