Juan Williams

In an argument which would make his ex-NPR colleagues proud, Juan Williams took to Fox News Sunday to push for tax hikes to reduce the deficit. Scolding Brit Hume, an exasperated Williams contended: “You’re going on as if, ‘you know what, we don't know in America how to help our own deficit problems.’ We do. We just have to tax people.”

Moments before, in assessing Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s expected plan on how to slow budget growth, Williams insisted “tax increases should not be off the table,” chastising Ryan for, during an interview with Chris Wallace earlier on the show, rejecting a tax increase: “I don't know why it is that he somehow suggests the rich in the country have no obligation to support the country.”

After Bill Maher called the Koran "a hate-filled book" on HBO's "Real Time" Friday, NewsBusters asked if he would be attacked by the media for doing so.

With no outrage having ensued, the folks at Fox News on Monday questioned why Maher's comments went ignored by the Muslim defenders in the press, with Juan Williams telling Bill O'Reilly that if he had said anything like that, "They would have tied you to the pillar and be whipping you and stoning you" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of a stunning video revealing the truly deplorable opinions of one of its executives, NPR has accepted the resignation of President Vivian Schiller while putting Ron Schiller (no relation) on administrative leave.

Fox News's Juan Williams, who was disgracefully fired by the radio network last year for having the nerve to voice his opinion, lashed out at NPR Tuesday evening on the "Hannity" show (videos follow with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, a left-wing blogger last Saturday racially attacked Herman Cain calling him a "monkey" and a "minstrel."

On Thursday, Fox News's Sean Hannity and Juan Williams had a fabulous discussion about the prevalence of bigotry towards all black conservatives from supposedly open-minded, colorblind liberals (absolutely must-see videos follow in two parts with transcript and commentary):

Ronald Reagan may have won the Cold War by forcing the Soviet Union to realize that it could not compete financially or technologically with a revitalized United States. But to the American media, the Reagan defense buildup seemed like a plot designed to deny government aid to poor and hungry people. It was seemingly the only spending that caused the budget deficit, even bankrupted the country. Cranking up spending on supposedly unworkable new ideas like a national missile defense system was “absolute nonsense,” as ABC’s Ted Koppel told Phil Donahue in 1987.

A 1985 Los Angeles Times survey of reporters found out how McGovernite liberalism dominated the press: 84 percent of reporters and editors supported a so-called “nuclear freeze” to ban all future nuclear missile deployment; 80 percent were opposed to increased defense spending; and 76 percent objected to aid to the Contra rebels fighting for democracy in Nicaragua. One side of this debate had an eye on permanent “peaceful coexistence.” The other side had an eye on victory.

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik reported on NPR’s internal review of the Juan Williams firing and the coinciding resignation of senior vice president Ellen Weiss on both Thursday’s night’s All Things Considered and Friday’s Morning Edition. Both stories were strictly limited to soundbites from NPR officials and in each story, one soundbite from Williams reacting on Fox News.

Perhaps due to this sterile, defensive soundbite list, NPR was slapping themselves on the wrists. Folkenflik said Weiss’s depature was a “startling fall,” but on Morning Edition, evening anchor Robert Siegel said “the logic was clear.”

"It doesn't surprise me that somebody was going to go, after the incredibly sloppy, messy and often embarrassing severance of Juan Williams," Siegel said. “I don’t think Ellen’s leaving is a measure of her work over the years. It was this one, very poorly handled [move].”

Appearing on FNC's Fox & Friends on Friday, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell reacted to the resignation of National Public Radio executive Ellen Weiss and credited the incoming Republican Congress: "NPR is hearing footsteps, their hearing the footsteps of Republicans, who are saying...what in the world are we doing spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this network that is completely unnecessary."

As NewsBusters' Tim Graham earlier reported, an internal review of NPR's firing of news analyst and Fox News contributor Juan Williams led to Weiss being forced out.
        
In addition, Bozell predicted that despite the resignation of Weiss, NPR would soon returned to its biased coverage. He explained: "This is the face of the intolerant left today...these people are utterly intolerant of any position other than their radical agenda and they will kneecap you, including their own, Juan Williams, if you do anything such as appear on Fox News." [Audio available here]

View video below

On Thursday, the NPR Board of Directors announced it has concluded an internal review of the firing of senior analyst Juan Williams for comments on the Fox News Channel. In what a spokesman called “two distinct pieces of news,” the internal review came with the resignation of Ellen Weiss, NPR’s senior vice president for news, the one who fired Williams over the phone. Weiss, whose husband Rabbi David Saperstein is an adviser to President Obama’s faith-based initiative, told Williams he didn’t have enough remorse for his comments admitting fear of Muslims:

"She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments. She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead she continued to ask me what did I mean and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR's values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst."

Williams chose not to participate in the review (perhaps knowing his view of the firing was already quite public.) The idea that Weiss's departure is coincidental doesn't come across in the Board's findings:

“This is such a weak field,” Fox News analyst Juan Williams, recently ousted from NPR for not fully toting the far-left line, declared during a Fox News Sunday discussion of potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates, prompting an appalled Bill Kristol to mock: “Yeah, President Obama had done so much when he ran for President. I mean, all of these guys are better qualified than Barack Obama.”

Williams got in the last words of the December 26 segment, using them to deride Sarah Palin compared to Barack Obama:

There is nobody out there except for Sarah Palin who could absolutely dominate the stage and she can't stand on the intellectual stage with Obama.

That caused oohs from the panel and led host Chris Wallace to suggest “there’ll be a lump of coal” in Williams’ stocking. (Audio: MP3 clip)

During his impromptu press conference in the White House briefing room Friday, former President Bill Clinton favorably referred to comments Charles Krauthammer made at the Washington Post earlier in the day.

On Fox News's "Hannity" that evening, Krauthammer joked, "When you get praise from President Clinton and you are from my side of the aisle that means that my career is done, I mean, I'm toast. Maybe NPR will take me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Al Sharpton on Monday said that he's going to be meeting with representatives of the FCC next week about revoking conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's license.

On a special 9PM edition of the "Ed Show," the Reverend didn't mince words (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill O'Reilly on Monday jokingly warned children not to watch MSNBC on election night due to the possibility Republican victories will make some of the on-air employees commit suicide.

Juan Williams joined in saying, "Harikari" (video follows with transcript and commentary, h/t Mediaite):

"Follow the money," the left insisted when News Corporation donated $1 million to the Republican Governor's Association. The implication was that since News Corp. gave lots of money to Republicans (nearly 10 times as much as it did to Democrats), Fox News coverage that casted the GOP in a positive light could fairly be seen as a direct result of that contribution.

By the standard much of the left advanced, National Public Radio's firing of Juan Williams can fairly be presented as a direct result of liberal billionaire George Soros's $1.8 million contribution to NPR two days before Williams's firing.

NPR and other liberals are trying to convert the firing of Juan Williams into another episode of bullying conservatism. NPR deployed Jon Stewart in self-defense on Tuesday’s Morning Edition. Anchor Steve Inskeep noted Stewart’s arrival in Washington, DC marked his first show since the Williams purge, and they ran this joke:

STEWART [From the Daily Show]: Are you kidding me, NPR? Are you picking a fight with Fox News? They gave Juan Williams a $2 million contract just for you firing him. NPR, you just brought a tote bag full of David Sedaris books to a knife fight.

NPR suggested that this came in the spirit of "sanity" and that Stewart's rally is designed to "take it down a notch." But wasn’t NPR the network who took a knife to Juan's career, and Fox the ones with a tote bag full of goodies? In The New York Times, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter also explained that liberalism is losing because it’s not doltishly simple, it’s too complex for the average American:

Fired NPR news analyst Juan Williams is firing back at critics of Fox News Channel. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Williams said Fox management is "much more enlightened" than executives at other news outlets, from NPR to CNN:

"At NPR they don't know this: A third of the audience for Bill O'Reilly's show is made up of people of color," Williams said. "At NPR, they think, `Oh, these people who watch Fox don't appreciate diversity of opinion, they're not smart people. They're not informed people. Oh, yeah? I'll tell you what: They're informed."

...Williams said NPR "just doesn't understand the Fox audience" -- or have any idea how much more enlightened Fox News management is in some ways compared with news outlets like NPR, CNBC or CNN.

The National Public Radio (NPR) executive who fired Juan Williams is behind an effort lobbying for a new tax to be levied on private media outlets in order to finance a BBC-style state media, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center Brent Bozell told viewers of Fox Business Network's "Varney & Company" at 10:45 a.m. today.

NPR president Vivian Schiller is "part of a group which wants to essentially tax existing media companies... and use that tax money to create a national network of public broadcasting companies to put out a news broadcast on a national basis, like an American BBC," Varney noted.

"Let's put it another way, the attack on Juan Williams... wasn't really an attack on Juan Williams," Bozell replied.

National Public Radio’s firing of Juan Williams tells you all you need to know about the radical, and thoroughly intolerant, Left. Juan Williams is a liberal, but still, he isn’t liberal enough. The idea that he would acknowledge a mere thought of discomfort at the idea of people in “Muslim garb” on airplanes in a post-9/11 world became a firing offense. It didn’t matter that he prefaced it with all the perfunctory and politically correct disclaimers about not being a bigot and we shouldn’t blame all Muslims for terrorism.

Fired.

Today’s Left is void of any principles whatsoever. They can be as astonishingly offensive and insulting as they want toward Christians, and no one gets punished. The indefatigable Catholic League provides the documentation.

Last night Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly aired an ambush interview that "O'Reilly Factor" producer Jesse Watters sprung on Vivian Schiller, National Public Radio's president.

Last week, Schiller fired Williams over the phone in reaction to a comment the Fox News contributor made on the October 18 edition of O'Reilly's eponymous program.

Schiller, no stranger to cable news -- she used to head up CNN's documentary division --  also put her foot in her mouth last week by flippantly dismissing Williams's comments on the "Factor" as something he should have kept between himself and his psychiatrist.

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If you were wondering just how far to the left Joy Behar's political views skew, wonder no more.

Discussing National Public Radio's firing of Juan Williams, Behar pitched the tired line that NPR is actually a middle of the road news organization. Her logic (I use the term loosely): "NPR has been vetted by objective Media Matter-type people and they have found that…NPR is very balanced."

You know it's time to recalibrate your metrics for political neutrality when the far-left blog Media Matters earns the label "objective" (video and transcript below the fold).

Whatever happened to Ed Schultz's solidarity with the working man? Isn't that supposed to be the essence of Schultz's shtick?  But on his MSNBC show this evening, Ed played the paid-by-management Pinkerton, busting his nightstick over the head of . . . Juan Williams.

Proclaimed anti-worker Ed: "when you fire somebody: it's over, move on. Don't go back over spilled milk."

Ed Schultz, tool of the bosses--who knew? Video after the jump.

On Monday's "Morning Joe," co-host Joe Scarborough cast Fox News as an unabashedly conservative network while trumpeting his own show as a neutral voice of sanity in a polarized news environment. "In this world of Balkanized cable news outlets...it is kind of nice being Switzerland," he gloated, asserting the neutrality of his "Morning Joe" program.

"This show is a safe house where people can come and talk whether they are on the right or the left," Scarborough described his MSNBC morning show. "But there aren't many places left like that outside these three hours."

"Morning Joe" by-and-large leaves guests the freedom to express their own opinion. But Scarborough's assumption leaves out the fact that an overwhelming number of liberal guests and analysts appear on the show. Jon Meacham of Newsweek, former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch, and Tina Brown of The Daily Beast are three of many liberals who appear regularly on "Morning Joe."

In contrast, a far-right conservative appearing on "Morning Joe" is rare. MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan is one of the few conservative voices appearing regularly on the show. RedState's Erik Erickson appears infrequently and contributors from publications like National Review appear rarely if ever.
 

And then there are those who are beyond hope.

Appearing on Ed Schultz's radio show Friday, here's what fellow liberal radio host Bill Press said about NPR firing Juan Williams for violating the network's version of sharia law (audio here) --

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne said Sunday that NPR is one of the best news organizations in the world and challenged anyone to find evidence the radio network is the slightest bit liberally biased.

To prove his claim, Dionne hysterically pointed out to his fellow "Meet the Press" panelists that whenever he's on NPR, he's often countered by "conservatives" - like New York Times columnist David Brooks (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume condemned NPR for its “howling double standard” in firing Juan Williams for expressing an opinion, a standard “manifestly not being applied to other NPR people.” He forwarded the theory that “in the culture of NPR, appearing on Fox is a sin” and “for an African-American man” to “be kind of a Bill Cosby liberal, not a down-the-line liberal, is a sin as well.”
 
Hume’s assessment came after host Chris Wallace read from a column in which Cokie Roberts denounced Glenn Beck as “worse than a clown. He’s more like a terrorist,” showed a clip of her disagreeing with a court ruling on partial birth abortion and ran a soundbite of Nina Totenberg, NPR’s legal correspondent, attacking a Supreme Court decision. Fortune magazine’s Nina Easton recalled how Daniel Schorr “did a biting, acerbic, liberal commentary regularly on NPR” where “he called the 2000 Supreme Court decision, that gave George Bush the right to take office as President, he described that as a ‘junta,’ as ‘a coup.’”

“So much to dislike about NPR, it's hard to know where to begin,” Bill Kristol later quipped.

Andrew Sullivan on Friday said that if you say something bigoted on Fox News, you get rewarded, promoted, and celebrated.

As the topic of NPR's firing of Juan Williams was raised on the syndicated program "The Chris Matthews Show," Sullivan was far more critical of the cable news station than the radio network (video follows with transcript and commentary):

“Why is it okay for Nina to express opinions, as she has tartly, sharply, unashamedly and openly” while serving as “an honored correspondent” for NPR, while Juan Williams, “because he expresses his opinions, gets canned from NPR?” So Charles Krauthammer demanded while sitting Friday with Totenberg on the same Inside Washington set. “In fact, the standard ought to be lower in the case of Juan because he’s an analyst, whereas Nina is a correspondent.”

Krauthammer had picked up on NPR CEO Vivian Schiller’s contention that the network had canned Williams because he violated the policy that “news analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts, and that's what's happened in this situation.”

An uncomfortable Totenberg asserted “it’s a very, very difficult line to draw. And NPR tries to draw it, in my view, using rules that don’t exist anymore.” To which, Krauthammer wondered: “But what’s the difference between you and Juan expressing opinions? You on this show, and him on Fox?” He condemned NPR: “It’s completely illogical and hypocritical.” (Audio: MP3 clip)

Juan Williams struck back at his former employers on Friday by pointing out the hypocrisy of him being fired for his comments about Muslims when others at NPR have said far worse without receiving any disciplinary action whatsoever.

Filling in for the regular host of Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," Williams gave the radio station he dutifully represented the past ten years a well-deserved piece of his mind (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It appears Juan Williams’ firing is just what the public needed to realize their tax dollars are being poorly handled through subsidies from the federal government given to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to prop up National Public Radio.

However, “Red Eye” host Greg Gutfeld makes the most reasonable case not to deprive NPR of its taxpayer subsidies. On the Oct. 23 broadcast of his program, Gutfeld explains to his viewers his case for not defunding the radio organization, but not without taking some jabs their decision to fire his Fox News colleague.

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