Firing offense: NPR axes Juan Williams for opinions on Muslims & post-9/11 travel
Un-freaking-believable.
Cable news blogger Johnny Dollar red-flagged NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik’s Twitter feed, which announced tonight that liberal NPR analyst/Fox News contributor Juan Williams’ contract was terminated — over comments Williams made about Muslims on The O’Reilly Factor. He gave his honest opinion: “[W]hen I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Guess who stirred up the pot to get Williams fired?
Think Progress and the Huffington Post:
That’s right. Government-funded NPR has apparently caved into left-wing attack dogs on the Internet.
Also in the lynch mob: CAIR, of course.
And here’s excitable Andrew Sullivan giving Williams his “Malkin Award” nomination. Yeah, kiss of death.
As I’ve said many times before: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.
Condolences to Juan Williams, whom I’ve debated –vigorously, but always with respect and cordiality — many times over the years.
Hope this accelerates his journey on the ideological learning curve. And I hope he doesn’t back down.
***
More from Brian Stelter at the NYTimes:
NPR has terminated its contract with Juan Williams, one of its senior news analysts, after he made comments about Muslims on the Fox News Channel.
NPR said in a statement that it gave Mr. Williams notice of his termination on Wednesday night.
The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”
Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.
He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.
NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
NPR has undermined whatever credibility it had left with this boneheaded capitulation.
Your tax dollars at work.
***
Worth noting: NPR affiliate employee Sarah Spitz at public radio station KCRW wishes death on Rush Limbaugh…not a firing offense.
***
Reminder of George Soros’s NPR cash infusion this week:
NPR has received a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations to begin a project called Impact of Government that is intended to add at least 100 journalists at NPR member radio stations in all 50 states over the next three years.
The reporters, editors and analysts will cover state governments and how their actions affect people.
The project “creates capacity for local stations to hire reporters and to cover issues that matter that other places aren’t doing,” said Vivian Schiller, NPR’s president and chief executive. “Everything that we’re doing as relates to member stations comes down to two things: building local news capacity and making sure the content we create is available to all people across all platforms.”
Ms. Schiller said the journalists would not be part of typical statehouse coverage, but instead would work on enterprise journalism that looks at how state government decisions play out over years, and extend beyond a single state’s borders.
The program, one of a number of new public media reporting projects meant to counter some of the cutbacks in profit-making journalism, will begin with an eight-state pilot phase in March 2011. Eventually, NPR and local stations hope to raise about $17 million to expand the program, and $18 million to $19 million annually to sustain it, said Ron Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation and NPR’s senior vice president for development (and no relation to Ms. Schiller.)
The project is also intended to help the public radio network raise more money. Although NPR stations attract millions of small donors, and NPR itself received a $230 million grant from the Joan B. Kroc estate in 2003, NPR and its stations want to attract more major philanthropists, Mr. Schiller said.
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Just wondering: Why is Urban Outfitters selling NPR t-shirts?
***
More questions from Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack:
Did NPR fire Williams because of what he said or because of who he said it to? If Williams had gone on whatever passes for a news program on an NPR station, or fought his way through the cobwebs and sat down with radio-corpse Diane Rehm, there is no doubt that whatever he said would have met with some sort of rebuttal, after which Williams could have made his apologies and recited the standard boilerplate about “extremists” in Islam. However, in front of Bill O’Reilly no such admonishment would ever take place. In fact, O’Reilly would likely agree with him and who knows if that meeting of right and left minds on the matter wouldn’t have served as the long-dreaded Bat Signal that would light up the sky and signal us crazed Tea Partiers to begin our pogrom against everything even remotely Muslim.
So perhaps Williams was cashiered not for his comments, but for the venue in which he chose to haltingly air them.
No doubt.
Let CAIR and Soros pay for prog-tested, jihadi-approved propaganda: DE-FUND NPR.
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I agree with Juan Williams 100%. However I would add, check all Mosques for hate speech, weapons, and C-4.
CAIR can go to hell.
$2 million?!
That’s landing on your feet…….
On October 20th, 2010 at 11:52 pm, Flyoverman said:
Actually, a liberal is a conservative that’s never left his or her home state, nor has ever been overseas.
This whole thing comes as no surprise for me from Nutroot Propaganda Radio. They’ve had nothing pro-American or supporting of Traditional Values for better’n a decade at the very minimal.
What’s further cool is that Mr. Williams received a cool $2 million from Fox News, a considerable leap in salary from NPR…
So…an Imam standing on a street corner shouting at the top of his lungs…”Death to America”…that’s just fine. But Juan Williams can’t express an opinion about a mooslum? What the he## has this country come to? Screaming, ranting HATE is o.k., but expressing an opinion that is not PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH gets you fired.
The disgusting things that are said by the left every day gets passed by as acceptable. I’m sorry, but we cannot live with these people. They are insane. They must be caged.
Then let’s defund the universities.
Please forgive the adjectives, but they are the only accurate ones I could come up with:
Such a stupid, foolish statement, it is hard to know where to begin….
To any of those individuals (I am not convinced a) that that group is that large; and b) that the majority in that group should be considered “Americans”, or even consider themselves to be Americans first) in the group to whom you refer who passively or tacitly support or allow, or are otherwise OK with; and do not support fighting against their fellow-”religionist” Jihadi barbarians, including killing as many of those savages as is necessary to protect civilization; to any of them who feel offended, I say, “Too *#ddamn bad”.
Simplistically put, I am aware.
But, we are in a war.
To repeat…we are in a war – an existential war, a war for survival.
My goal is to protect myself, my family, my countrymen, and other areas of civilization.
Last on my priority list is whether a group that contains enablers, abetters, and sympathizers,…even frightened, cowed fellow-”co-religionists” who are too frightened to help defend civilization against these animals, feels offended.
How often, and how ferociously/viciously over the past 1400 years (and today) have “black people” barbarously attacked civilization in general, and preyed upon/parasitized/destroyed civilizations in particular?
How often, and how ferociously/viciously over the past 1400 years (and today) have “Jews” barbarously attacked civilization in general, and preyed upon/parasitized/destroyed civilizations in particular?
What?
How often?
How viciously/ferociously/barbarously?
What was that?
Oh, that’s right…crickets….
I don’t care. All I know is I am now boycotting them, just like I am boycotting cities that do not support the Arizona law.
Best thing to happen to Juan Williams. What really bothers me about NPR is that, like PBS, it is a publicly subsidized enterprise. Every other on-air personality, when they aren’t on sabbatical writing their latest book, has the opportunity to hawk their wares. Ira Glass won’t be hurting for cash anytime soon between his TV show and public appearances. They are name-brands at this point, like most childrens’ programming on PBS. They can make it on their own.
I made a comment a couple of hours ago that must have been deemed inappropriate, as it wasn’t posted. My comment referenced a card game in which one is a fool if one reveals one’s hand.
I assure the monitor that I was not engaging in double entendre.
More Liberal Intolerance leading to a person being fired…