Juan Williams: NPR Went After Me Because 'I Appear On Fox'

[Turborama]

Source: NPR

by MARK MEMMOTT and DAVID FOLKENFLIK

Saying that he thinks NPR terminated his contract because "I appear on Fox," news analyst Juan Williams tonight continued to protest the decision by NPR executives to cut the organization's ties with him.

"I don't fit in their box. I'm not a predictable, black liberal," he told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, however, told executives of NPR's member stations that Williams' contract was terminated Thursday because he had more than once expressed personal opinions on controversial issues while offering commentary on other media outlets' shows — most recently on Monday's edition of Fox's The O'Reilly Factor when Williams says he gets nervous when he sees people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes.

Williams, who Fox announced Thursday would be taking on an "expanded" role with that network and had signed a multi-year contract, joined NPR a decade ago as host of Talk of the Nation and later became a senior correspondent. But he rankled executives with outspoken remarks on Fox News, where he was also a paid commentator, and in newspaper opinion pieces. In the spring of 2008, NPR shifted him from a staff correspondent position, making him instead a senior news analyst on contract. In 2009, NPR also asked Fox News not to identify him as an NPR analyst on screen — most recently, after he described first lady Michelle Obama as being like the black militant Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress.

Schiller compared Williams' dismissal to NPR's recent decision to ban news staffers from attending the upcoming Washington rally of political satirist Jon Stewart - who frequently targets conservatives. She says it's important to maintain journalistic objectivity.


Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/21/130729461/npr-ombudsman-williams-should-have-been-given-choice

---

NPR fighting back.

This thread started by 1gobluedem gives a really good insight behind the reason he was fired, too: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9361586

[Gman]

1. Oh SFTU, Williams

just STFU. We don't want to hear it.

[sakabatou]

2. What an asshole...

[derby378]

3. Ooga Booga Smooga Wooga!

helderheid, your moment has come again... :hi:

[NoodleyAppendage]

4. You don't "fit in their box," because you are NOT a journalist anymore.

Once you made the decision to sell yourself and opinion for money and eschewed any journalistic objectivity (and integrity) you may have had, it was just a matter of time before NPR kicked your ass out the door.

Quit whining, you petulant baby.

J

[ProSense]

5. This is the RW's attempt to distract from the secret money charges against the Chamber of Commerce

VIDEO: O'Reilly and Rove flip out over Soros -- "the Godfather of the radical left" -- and his "smear machine"

[CC]

6. Most contracts are spelled out

pretty thoroughly and difficult to get out of without cause. If Williams contract allowed him to be fired without good cause he might want to look into a new agent before he signs a contract with Fox.

[Turborama]

Funny, Megyn Kelly said something similar just now on O'Lielly's show

NPR has a clearly written code of conduct (emphasis mine)...

“In appearing on TV or other media . . . NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist. They should not participate in shows . . . that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.”

More fundamentally, “In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.”

This, and a comment on the warnings he was given, was in a letter to NPR employees that was posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9361586

[Bette Noir]

28. Most contracts require that you don't moonlight without prior approval,

and never, never for the competition.

Sure he was fired for working for FOX, same as someone working for Nestle's would be fired for working at Hershey's.

I'd have fired him for the "Stokely Carmichael" comment.

[beac]

7. Why am I suddenly pronouncing his first name

"Whine"?

[Turborama]

11. For some strange reason I keep thinking his second name is Kerr

Maybe it was watching The Simpsons earlier that brought it on.

[Ticonderoga]

8. The message is clear

Ok Juan we know you're black, but you certainly are not a liberal.

[Kind of Blue]

15. Ditto! I 'm shocked that he considers himself a liberal. n/t

[Lasher]

22. He has to say that

so that he can continue to get all those spots on Faux as the token liberal on the panel.

[No Elephants]

43. If he honestly considers himself a liberal, he's delusional. Neither he nor NPR is liberal.

[herbm]

30. Why should "black" be synonymous to "liberal"?

[No Elephants]

40. No one said it was, though Williams implied something. Did you read the OP?

[HuckleB]

9. You appear on Fox because you're an idiot, and NPR fired you because you're an idiot.

And that's being very, very, very kind.

[marybourg]

10. A few years ago NPR gave him a job as a host, but he was so dumb

he was an embarrassment. He couldn't recognize the word "gladiolus" from a story on a kid's spelling bee. He insisted, even after a guest tried to gently correct him, that it was a word pronounced glad-u-lus, whose meaning he didn't know. That was his third embarrassing faux pas and he was demoted to "news analyst" shortly thereafter. Prime Fox News material.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Good

You appear on an outright propaganda network, then pretend to offer something like "analysis" on public radio.

Fuck off. Take that shill Mara Liasson with you.

[bullwinkle428]

13. Stop whining, schumck - you got your $2 million!

[xxqqqzme]

17. and a THREE year contract on faux snooze.

[Bitwit1234]

14. He migh appear on fox but he disappeared from NPR for

racist remarks didn't he. Of course fox lets you show your racism when ever you want over there.

[Arrowhead2k1]

16. The guy expressed something stupid and prejudice.

If anyone had said anything similar against any other race, there would have been hell to pay and rightfully so. But no, since it's against Muslims, like 3/4ths of the country feels the urge to defend him.

[roxiejules]

24. Wouldn't Jesse Jackson's comment be similiar?

"There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." - Jesse Jackson (1993)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/960318/archive_010008.htm

[Turborama]

26. You posted a partial quote, as the WikiQuote site you linked to says US News did. The full quote...

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating."

Why did you chose to post the partial quote in the second link rather than the full quote which was in the link just above it? :shrug:

BTW That's a false equivalence. Jesse Jackson doesn't work for NPR. Without going through the news of 1993, I suspect there was a lot of outrage at the time wherever someone used that partial quote.

[herbm]

31. Thank you for the full quote. I think it fits in with his plane quote.

I don't think he was making anti-Muslim statement. I think he was commenting on the how do we find find ourselves here after all we;ve been through and recognizing it when others in that same moment don't comprehend the full impact of it.

[Turborama]

32. You're reading too much into what he said. It was indeed an Islamophobic statement

"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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia

-

[herbm]

37. Expressing fear (rational or not) is not hate speech.

[Turborama]

39. I didn't use the phrase "hate speech". "Islamophobia" is what I wrote, I even gave you a link...

...to a definition.

Nice attempt at throwing in a red herring to deflect, but no cigar for you.

(edited to add missing parenthesis)

[No Elephants]

41. When fear is based on religion, race, etc, your comment is debatable, at best.

And the way you sanitized what Williams said is dishonest, as is your pretending you were responding to a post that mentioned hate speech, rather than Islamaphobia.

[roxiejules]

50. Agreed - fear is not hate

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Binka]

38. LOL n/t

[roxiejules]

48. Quotes mean the same thing: Fear

Don't see a difference in the meaning of the two quotes. There is nothing to hide here.

Jackson expressed fear, Williams expressed fear. The First Amendment protects the free marketplace of ideas. I think open dialogue is better than censorship and marginalizing "hate" speech is very dangerous.

Shall we have the news media impose its own values on us, punishing those who do not conform to it view of what is politically correct?


Thanks for your comments....

[hedgehog]

53. The difference is that Jackson expressed regret and humiliation

for feeling that fear, while Williams went on to justify his fear.

[Turborama]

55. Thanks for explaining it so succinctly. n/t

[roxiejules]

58. George Orwell and Liberty

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect.
-George Orwell

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go


Letter from publisher who decided not to publish Animal Farm because of political correctness:

If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

[Turborama]

59. "Fear is not hate speech" - roxiejules

"Jackson expressed fear, Williams expressed fear. The First Amendment protects the free marketplace of ideas. I think open dialogue is better than censorship and marginalizing "hate" speech is very dangerous." - roxiejules

[Binka]

33. Good Fucking Grief

Could you be more obvious? Really.

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[No Elephants]

42. Nothing like convenient ellipses, eh, Roxie?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

47. It might be similar, if Juan is an Islamic Imam

and expressing regret about the generality of Islamophobia, even among Muslims.

I don't think that's the case. The comment might be similar, but the context is not.

:hi:

[TheeHazelnut]

18. If NPR is so horrible and left wing and "you didn't fit there," Juan...

Why did you accept their money for how many years, Juan? Why did they keep you employed? Even when you appeared on Fox News for years? You lying sack of crap. They gave you a job for that long and you cooperate with people who are trying to shut them down? What a scumbag.

[struggle4progress]

19. "Michelle Obama, you know she's got the Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. If she

starts talking ... her instinct is to start with this 'Blame America'"

Jackass

[No Elephants]

44. As though Carmichael had no legitimate reason to blame 1950's America for anything.

He was simply being uppity.

[struggle4progress]

57. Mr Williams' comment was content-free. It was solely intended to stir up rightwingers

with the vision of Black Power advocates in the White House

Carmichael, of course, did excellent work in SNCC. But there's little point in discussing Carmichael or what Williams was saying about him: he had been dead a decade when Williams made his remark, and the only purpose of Williams' comment (in any case) was vacuous association of names

[Grassy Knoll]

20. I would have fired you a long ago......

for sitting so close you could smell liz cheney.

[savalez]

21. That's enough for me.

[PSPS]

23. Uncle Ruckus lives.

[tomhayes]

25. But i like Uncle Ruckus

Because we know he's saying things written as jokes.

Ruckus on Shade 45: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwguSrBRA4

[Tunkamerica]

27. And Juan Williams' new show on FOX starts when?

[BlueMTexpat]

29. Juan Williams playing the victim - he really does have the RW

talking points down pat.

:nopity:

[No Elephants]

45. Your appearance on Fox was not the problem. Problem was, your mike was on while your bigoted mouth

was running.

[western mass]

46. typical RWer...whining and playing the victim

[Javaman]

49. whine whine whine. nt

[mod mom]

51. FAUX is NOT a news source but a RW propaganda tool and should be described only as such.

Participating in this propaganda hurts the unbiased nature that NPR portrays. In Mr Williams case, he was spreading the fear and bias that FAUX uses as their mantra. I am glad he was canned only sorry it took so long.

[frontrange]

52. Watch George Stephanopolos' interview with Juan Williams

Even though I despise Fox News, nothing Juan said merited his firing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyQW5MrITME&feature=player_embedded

[Turborama]

54. If you despise Faux you'll understand...

...that it was a culmination of appearances on that channel which led to his firing. The last comment he made was the straw which broke the camel's back after multiple warnings.

The OP explains this, as does the letter to NPR's employees which was posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9361586

[Evasporque]

56. I recall a fluffy softball interview of Dubya....when Iraq was crumbling

Torture was exposed...and Jaun tossed him soft-hitting fluffies...


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7065633

Puke fluff.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

60. Well in that case. Good, we don't need people belonging to hate groups

polluting our airwaves.