THE DAILY TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – JANET DALEY: In New York last week everybody – and I mean everybody, not just the self-obsessed media crowd – was talking about the sacking of Juan Williams by National Public Radio. The significance of this saga seemed to encapsulate all the major points of contention in the political commentary wars which have become such a feature of American public life.Mr Williams is an engaging, black liberal broadcaster who has been a pillar of NPR’s left-of-centre journalist tradition. In addition to the day job, he appeared regularly as a panellist on Fox News discussions, representing the left-liberal opposition to the channel’s more rightwing commentators. It is widely suspected that this established connection with Fox had something to do with the bizarre vindictiveness with which he was summarily dismissed by his bosses at NPR. Officially, Mr Williams’s sacking offence was to have declared (on a Fox News programme, as it happened) that he felt uneasy when he entered an airplane and encountered Muslims in tradtional religious dress.
That was it. He did not expand this comment into an anti-Islamic diatribe or make any hostile remarks about Muslims or their religious beliefs. But NPR felt that this was sufficient cause for terminating his employment (of many years’ standing) without further notice. Whereupon, virtually every sentient being of every political persuasion from Whoopi Goldberg on the left to Bill O’Reilly on the right, condemned NPR – whose knowledge of the constitutional right to free speech seemed surprisingly inadequate considering that it is exists by virtue of government subsidy - and Fox News immediately offered him a contract worth a reported $2 million. Read on and comment >>> Janet Daley | Tuesday, October 26, 2010
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