I mean, 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 a 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.
— Juan Williams in 2010
Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me.
Image via
Personally, I don’t understand the brouhaha surrounding NPR’s termination of Juan Williams. For starters, Williams violated NPR’s journalistic standards, and he’s been warned before regarding statements he’s made on Fox News. Also, NPR didn’t violate Williams’s free-speech rights, and Muslim Americans shouldn’t be treated different merely because they’re Muslim.
On The O’Reilly Factor, Juan Williams admitted to experiencing nervousness when he sees people in Muslim garb flying with him on an airplane. If you give his statement a little thought, especially considering that Juan Williams is an author of civil rights history, it’s quite ridiculous and ignorant. Indeed, “to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats‘” is ridiculous. Such narrow-minded and ignorant views are frequently expressed on Fox News by its right-wing pundits. However, the views expressed on NPR are objective, informed, or meant to enlighten. Therefore, Fox News and NPR don’t mix. ABC’s Barbara Walters makes an excellent observation: “Williams’ status as a news analyst for NPR who opined regularly on Fox was confusing.”
NPR explained Williams’s firing, “His remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.” As a result, “Williams’ presence on the largely conservative and often contentious prime-time talk shows of Fox News has long been a sore point with NPR News executives.” Most interesting, in addition to swiftly jumping to Williams’s defense, Fox News “offered him a new $2 million contract.” Fox News also, with its obtuse right-wing army, pounced on NPR. Via NPR.org:
The cable news channel assailed NPR for much of the evening while leading Republicans called for the U.S. Congress to cut off federal funding for NPR News. One of the first was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, himself a paid Fox commentator.
“It is an act of total censorship,” Gingrich said. “I think that the U.S. Congress should investigate NPR and consider cutting off their money.”
Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin — themselves possible Republican presidential candidates with similar ties to Fox — chimed in with the same call, as did others in more of a position to do so, such as South Carolina Sen. Jim Demint and Ohio Rep. John Boehner.
NPR receives roughly 2 percent 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.
Despite the criticism, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller stood her ground Thursday: “As a reporter, as a host, as a news analyst, you do not comment on stories.”
She said such restraint is a vital part of NPR’s code of ethics, which states that news staffers cannot say things in other public forums that they could not say on NPR’s airwaves as well.
“Certainly you have opinions — all human beings have their personal opinions,” Schiller said. “But it is the ideal of journalism that we strive for objectivity so we can best present the positions of people around all parts of the debate to our public so the public can make their own decisions about these issues.”
Schiller had her own verbal miscue Thursday. In an address to the Atlanta Press Club, she said perhaps Williams would have been better served confiding his thoughts to his psychiatrist or his publicist — a flip line for which she later apologized.
Still, some journalists with no ties to Fox blanched at the controversy. On her talk show, The View, ABC’s Barbara Walters suggested that Williams’ status as a news analyst for NPR who opined regularly on Fox was confusing.
“If you are a journalist, where you’re supposed to be straight and narrow and not giving opinions, that’s one thing — but if you’re someone giving your opinion, then you’re allowed to give your opinion. You may or may not agree,” Walters added.
Certainly, NPR wasn’t unreasonable in firing Williams. First, he’s been warned before: “[H]is on-air comments had become more openly opinionated in recent years, and this was why in 2008 his job title was changed from ‘news correspondent’ to ‘news analyst.’” Second, to protect its values, NPR should distance itself from Williams due to his unusual and strong opinions regarding Muslims on airplanes. NPR’s ombudsman summarizes (emphasis added):
It’s not about race. It’s also not about free speech, as some have charged. Nor is it about an alleged attempt by NPR to stifle conservative views. NPR offers a broad range of viewpoints on its radio shows and web site.
Instead, this latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR’s values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.
The issue also is whether someone on NPR’s payroll should be allowed to say something in one venue that NPR would not allow on its air. NPR’s ethics code says they cannot.
Also, NPR didn’t violate the First Amendment when it fired Williams for his statement about Muslims on The O’Reilly Factor. Via The Volokh Conspiracy:
A bunch of people have asked me whether NPR’s firing of Juan Williams for his statement about Muslims on The O’Reilly Factor violates the First Amendment. The answer is “no.” NPR is not a government actor, and thus not bound by the First Amendment; that it gets some funding from the government does not make it a government actor, just as private colleges’ getting grants and other benefits doesn’t make them government actors bound by the First Amendment. See Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830 (1982) (so holding, even as to a school that got 90% of its money from the government).
The government may by statute impose many conditions on the use of government funds — that’s what Congress did with Title VI and Title IX (which generally bar recipients of federal funds from discriminating based on race and sex). Congress thus might condition NPR’s funding on its not firing commentators based on their off-NPR speech. (I say “might” because there are sometwists which I set aside for now.) But Congress hasn’t enacted such a statute, and it is of course under no obligation to do so.
NPR CEO Vivian Schiller explains how Juan Williams has been in trouble with NPR before:
Q: So did Juan really get fired over just those Muslim comments? [He said he was uncomfortable with Muslims dressed in traditional garb on airplanes during a Fox News telecast yesterday.]
A: There have been several instances over the last couple of years where we have felt Juan has stepped over the line. He famously said last year something about Michelle Obama and Stokely Carmichael. [The quote on Fox News early last year: "Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going" and that she'll be an "albatross" for President Obama.]. This isn’t a case of one strike and you’re out.
Q: So this is obviously not an isolated incident.
A: There’s so much misinformation on the blogosphere, it’s nuts. This has been an on-going issue. [Here's NPR's ombudsman's piece on him last year after the Obama comment.] When he does that, when anybody does that, it undermines their credibility as a journalist or in Juan’s case, a news analyst for NPR. Those two things cannot go together.
There’s no statistical evidence to justify Williams’s generalization about Muslims in “Muslim garb” being a danger on airplanes, but there’s evidence that demonstrates Williams, being an author of civil rights, is applying a double standard to Muslims. Via Andrew Sullivan:
Notice that Williams uses facts and evidence to make these judgments. Yet the facts and evidence in the case he was discussing on Fox News prove that there is no statistical reason whatever to get nervous around those in Muslim garb on airplanes – since no terror attacks in America have been conducted by people in that attire. Yet that factor – and that alone – is what he invokes to justify his fear. This is anti-religious bigotry in its purest, clearest form.
In stark contrast, in the case of generalizing about nervousness and suspicion of thievery toward African-American men, Williams is far more circumspect. He takes statistical evidence into account; he looks for aspects in a human being that, independent of their race, might make one suspicious. He rules out judgment based on their clothing or their “acting nervously”. But when it comes to Muslims in traditional garb, he feels nervous because of that fact alone, and associates them immediately with a terror suspect involving Islam in general – not radical Jihadism – as at war with the West.
So generalized nervousness around people wearing Muslim garb (who statistically have committed zero acts of terrorism in the US) is not bigotry; but generalized nervousness and suspicion around young black men (who statistically were much more likely to commit the crimes in question in the thought experiment in the colloquium) is racism.
Why, in other words, did Williams not say about those in Muslim garb:
Common sense becomes bigotry when religious attire becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me.
Why does he have this extreme double standard? And how dare he use his own record in defending civil rights for African-Americans to justify his bigoted prejudice against devout Muslims?
I think the answer is pretty obvious. He is on Fox News, pandering to the anti-Muslim bigot, Bill O’Reilly. And Roger Ailes rewards him for that role, as a “liberal” justifying anti-Muslim bigotry, because pandering to bigotry makes for good ratings and good politics.
More on double standards and the intense backlash against NPR via Glenn Greenwald:
The double standard in our political discourse — which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim bigotry while stigmatizing other forms — has been as beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR’s firing of Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types. That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread. I’m not referring here to those who object to viewpoint-based firings of journalists in general and who have applied that belief consistently: that’s a perfectly reasonable view to hold (and one I share). I’m referring to those who rail against NPR’s actions by invoking free expression principles they plainly do not support and which they eagerly violate whenever the viewpoint in question is one they dislike. For most NPR critics, the real danger from Williams’ firing is not to free expression, but to the ongoing fear-mongering campaign of defamation and bigotry against Muslims (both foreign and domestic) that is so indispensable to so many agendas.
