Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly admitted to factual errors in a piece that aired on O’Reilly Factor Thursday night, but remained firm in his defense of the feature as satire.
In the segment called Watters World, correspondent Jesse Watters traveled to Dearborn, Michigan where the population is about 50 percent Arab, many of them Muslims.
Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations appeared on the show Friday to take O’Reilly to task for many factual errors in the piece.
Walid called the feature “old tired bigoted frameworks” about the community of Dearborn.
O’Reilly admitted to several errors after they were pointed out by Walid.
The story incorrectly stated the police chief of Dearborn is Muslim when he’s a Lebanese Christian.
The story failed to correct a false assertion by a person interviewed that a Muslim woman was killed there for simply having a condom and that there are honor killings in Dearborn.
Those were “legitimate points that should have been clarified by Watters, so I will cede that those things should have had clarification there.” said O’Reilly to Walid. “Your points about honor killings and stonings, that’s my fault as an editor.I should have said, you know what if you couldn’t back this up, and believe me, I’m glad you contacted us, because it won’t happen again.”
O’Reilly however continued to defend the piece as legitimate satire and that Watters “has no malice in that report.”
You can watch the entire five minute segment below.
