NPR: National Public Revulsion

In 1970…

National Public Radio is born three years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. In its mission statement NPR declares that it is devoted to “presentation of fair, accurate and comprehensive information and selected cultural expressions for the benefit of and at the service of our democracy,” along with promoting and protecting “diverse and balanced viewpoints through the entirety of its programming”. For over four decades, many Americans, including myself, have put our trust in NPR as a major news and cultural institution: a 2005 Harris Poll found that NPR, along with PBS, were the most highly trusted news sources among Americans, with 61% of people saying they favored public news programs above cable news, radio, and newspapers.

Last week…

NPR journalist Juan Williams appears on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly and speaks his mind about political correctness, Muslims and their relationship with the United States. He accurately notes that “political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality” and declares that even though he is hardly the bona fide conservative that Fox News favors, he believes that America is fighting a war against Islam and admits that “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”. Shortly after the interview with O’Reilly, NPR fired Williams, claiming that his remarks were “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR”. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller added that “news analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues, doing so undermines their credibility as analysts”.

In just a few hours…

The backlash against NPR was swift and strong. O’Reilly called the firing of Williams “a mockery and a sham”, and even Whoopi Goldberg, who refused to be in the same room with O’Reilly when he reiterated that Muslims carried out the 9/11 attacks, agreed dropping Williams was “ridiculous”. In a rare moment of unity, liberal and conservative pundits, writers and news outlets all called NPR out for immediately isolating themselves from Williams.

A few days later with Bill O’Reilly…

Williams’s personal take on the issue is that NPR had been on his case for a long time, and was looking for a reason to do away with him. According Williams, since he didn’t play the role of the “predictable, black liberal,” NPR disapproved of him and sought to fire him as soon as possible. It is a fact that most blacks support the Democratic Party and most black journalists and commentators are liberal, and Williams dared to break from that mold by going on Fox. NPR flirted with blatant racism by adhering to this stereotype. In this case, Williams actually deserved to be thanked for his bravery. Some critics supporting NPR claim that Williams proved himself to be a racist with deep seated paranoia directed at Muslims. They assert that Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Republican Party, and many other allies of Williams are racist and therefore their opinions have no validity.

Instead of examining the finer details and important points, NPR’s fans are saying that Williams and company are all despicable Islamophobes who have nothing but hatred for Muslims and Islam. They point out past examples of journalists who lost their jobs for outrageous comments, like Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez, and claim that Williams deserves to be ostracized like them. Actually, NPR’s supporters totally neglect the fact that all those journalists had far more controversial views than Williams. Nasr tweeted her admiration of Ayatollah Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah upon hearing of his death, a Hezbollah leader who spearheaded efforts to carry out suicide bombings against Israelis, question the magnitude of the Holocaust and boycott American products. Thomas told Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine,” while Sanchez affirmed his belief in one of the oldest and most disgusting tropes of anti-Semitism, which is the conspiracy that Jews secretly control the media and society as a whole.

Unlike these three, whose vicious and suspect comments placed their ability as fair journalists into jeopardy, Williams simply echoed a sentiment that many Americans share.

For all those who still maintain that Williams is a virulent racist, I suggest they take a look at his resume. He worked on the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, and has written a number of books exploring the evils of racism. Lastly, they should listen to a fascinating song called “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”. In just five minutes, it expresses a common and incurable flaw in all people, and as the National Review put it, “racism will never die, of course, until the human animal is dead”.

The common and unfortunately effective weapon of liberals is to equate conservatism with racism. What Williams said was simply blunt, not racist. He was not trying to attack one group of people, but simply revealed his own private thoughts that many people would be too scared to discuss in public due to the tyranny of political correctness. Williams was right when he pointed out that Islamic extremists are at war with America; it’s tragic that many people, especially NPR, will not admit it.

Just after losing his job…

Williams will not be unemployed for long. Fox News is offering him a three year, $2 million contract, and millions of Americans across the political spectrum are demanding that NPR apologize to Williams and reinstate him. The Washington Examiner, the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Joe Scarborough were just a few of the people and news outlets who came out in support of Williams. TIME Magazine and the British newspaper The Guardian both ran polls which indicated that the vast majority of Americans disapproved of NPR’s treatment of Williams.

Williams’s firing is another sign of a dangerous trend of bowing down to the straitjacket of political correctness. When Bill O’Reilly explicitly stated that “Muslims killed us on 9/11” during his appearance on “The View” on October 14, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg were so disgusted that they walked off the stage. Some people say O’Reilly and Williams are stereotyping Muslims with their comments, but hardly anyone gets into a fit when one declares that “the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor” or “the Germans killed 6 million Jews”. I do not believe that it is “racist”or “ignorant” when I state the obvious: that a very small but very real minority of Muslims (and some Japanese and Germans in the past) is willing to kill Americans and destroy the United States by any means necessary.

NPR’s decision to fire Williams immediately came back to haunt the radio station, since both liberals and conservatives have criticized the lack of tolerance displayed by NPR. NPR’s own mission statement asserts that it will strive to include “diverse and balanced viewpoints,” and in firing Williams, NPR failed their mission.

Last Friday…

Republic Senator Jim Demint of South Carolina recently announced plans to cut funding to NPR and PBS, arguing that “we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree”. Williams himself agrees that NPR no longer deserves government funding, and says that “if they want to compete in the marketplace, they should compete in the marketplace”. While any effort to defund NPR and PBS will be a long, uphill battle since NPR and PBS are such longstanding institutions, looking into stopping government funding should definitely be considered. Hopefully, the Williams incident and subsequent uproar will remind NPR of their original goals they set out to fulfill in 1970 and redirect them to being a genuinely diverse news outlet, instead of the current “liberal,” yet intolerant station.