Source:
USA TodaySen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., plans to introduce legislation to strip federal funds from National Public Radio over its firing of news analyst Juan Williams. He said he also plans to seek an end to taxpayer subsidies for public television.
"Once again we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree," DeMint said. "The incident with Mr. Williams shows that NPR is not concerned about providing the listening public with an honest debate of today's issues, but rather with promoting a one-sided liberal agenda."
NPR fired Williams this week for comments he made on Fox News, expressing unease about seeing Muslims on airplanes. Williams also warned against casting all Muslims as extremists. In a statement announcing his firing, NPR officials said Williams' remarks were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst."
=snip=
DeMint said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received nearly $4 billion in federal money since 2001 and is slated to receive $430 million in the 2011 fiscal year.
Read more:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/10/demint-npr-juan-williams/1
I watched that segment and don't remember him warning "against casting all Muslims as extremists".
This is what he said:
"Look, Bill, 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 are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
This is a totally predictable response but what a lame excuse. Defund NPR because a Faux news commentator was fired for breaking
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9361586">his employer's ethics codes?
Pathetic!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9369165">CNN Special Comment: NPR Right To Fire Juan Williams_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fired analyst Juan Williams suggests cutting federal funds for NPRNews analyst Juan Williams, who was fired by NPR News for comments he made about Muslims, suggests NPR should lose its federal funding.USA Today"If they want to compete in the marketplace, they should compete in the marketplace," Williams says today on Fox and Friends, according to the Daily Caller. "They don't need public funds. I think that they should go out there. They think their product is so great, go out and sell the product."
Williams, who has signed a $2 million contract as an analyst for Fox News in the wake of the controversy, also blasted NPR management, saying "it has no use for diversity of opinion, ideas" and notes that he was the only black male on the air at NPR.
"This is evidence of one-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing," Williams writes in a column for FoxNews.com. "It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130746229&ps=cprs">NPR receives about 2% of its annual income directly from federal sources such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, but its member stations rely more heavily on such sources, according to NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.
Full article:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/10/fired-analyst-juan-williams-suggests-cutting-federal-funds-for-npr/1