Fox Information senior political analyst Juan Williams, whose 2010 firing from his longtime perch at NPR got here following evaluation he supplied on Fox Information, responded Tuesday to allegations by an editor for the general public radio broadcaster detailing rampant bias and absence of registered Republicans in its newsroom.
Veteran NPR editor Uri Berliner gave a prolonged rebuke of his employers’ media protection of main information tales over the previous few years in an essay Tuesday for the Free Press. He blew the whistle on the outlet’s protection and cataloged voter registration data, which he mentioned depicted an 87–0 Democratic bent in its newsroom. Berliner alleged there’s an absence of “viewpoint diversity” and avoidance of phrases comparable to “biological sex” within the NPR newsroom.
Williams steered he was not stunned at Berliner’s feedback that an “an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR… [that is] devastating both for its journalism and its business model.”
On “The Ingraham Angle,” Williams recounted the aftermath of his firing over a decade in the past after an look on “The O’Reilly Factor” by which he expressed apprehension about witnessing Muslim garb in airports after the Sept. 11 terror assaults.
NPR EDITOR FOUND REGISTERED DEMOCRATS OUTNUMBERED REPUBLICANS 87–0 IN NEWSROOM
Juan Williams of Fox Information (Fox Information Sunday)
“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’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous,” he mentioned on the time.
Williams noted Tuesday that that was sufficient for NPR to chop ties with their longtime, left-leaning analyst, as he quipped to host Laura Ingraham.
“I don’t think I’m any wild-eyed conservative, but they thought I was too conservative a Black guy for their kind of company,” he mentioned.
“Not only did they fire me — they called me a psycho. I mean, they said horrible things about me quite publicly. So, no, it doesn’t surprise me what [Berliner] had to say.”
Williams famous his controversy occurred lengthy earlier than former President Trump appeared on the political scene in 2015 and threw the media into matches that proceed immediately.
“So they are a very much an insulated cadre of people who think they’re right, and they have a hard time with people who are different,” he mentioned.
Williams famous that, after he made the remark about turning into nervous within the airport, he defended the best of Muslims to construct property close to Floor Zero — as Sufi Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had triggered a firestorm on the time over his deliberate Park51 improvement a stone’s throw from the previous World Commerce Heart.
Throughout his look on “Factor,” he additionally famous that Christians in flip shouldn’t be blamed for terrorism dedicated by individuals like Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Constructing in Oklahoma Metropolis in 1995.
“[Y]et they threw me out the door, so this doesn’t surprise me at all,” Williams instructed host Laura Ingraham.
“I think what you’re seeing now, especially after Trump, is that we live in a very polarized media landscape, and they have established a beachhead on the far-left.”
Williams mentioned Berliner appropriately cited NPR’s viewers is disproportionately additional to the left than ever and that “you see fewer conservatives tuning in.”
On the time of Williams’ NPR firing, then-NPR CEO Vivian Schiller mentioned in an electronic mail to member stations that information analysts could not “take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts, and that’s what’s happened in this situation.”
On Tuesday, Ingraham pointed to a posting from Heritage Basis nationwide safety fellow Mike Gonzalez from Jan. 29, which known as for the federal government to halt taxpayer funding to “biased [and] woke public broadcasting.”
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When reached for touch upon Berliner’s allegations, an NPR spokesperson directed Fox Information Digital to a memo to workers by editor-in-chief Edith Chapin, the place she mentioned she and her crew “strongly disagree” with Berliner’s evaluation of the standard of NPR’s journalism and integrity.
“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories. We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world,” she wrote.
“Journalism is a collaborative process. Rigorous debate and self-examination are necessary parts of our pursuit of the facts, and exploring the diverse perspectives that drive world events is necessary to our public service mission. That’s why we have built in processes to verify accuracy and why we adhere to the highest editorial standards… “
“With all this said, none of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole, fostering a culture of conversation that breaks down the silos that we sometimes end up retreating to. Ideally, we engage in this debate respectfully, with the goal of lifting up and strengthening each other’s work. As our emerging strategic focus brings new insights into what audiences we do and do not currently serve, we have an obligation to more rigorously consider and measure how our coverage fulfills our public service to all audiences.”
“Let’s not forget that the reason we remain one of the most trusted news organizations in the country is that we respect people’s ability to form their own judgments,” Chapin added.
Fox Information Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.
