Juan Williams Fired

[Kevin]

I can see where NPR was coming from. Williams uttered words exposing a certain religious, racial or cultural bias, that, I think is indisputable. Whether his bias is justified is something people can disagree over. I think that it isn't. I'm on board with NPR up to a point.

Management at NPR was given two options, both bad:

1) Leave it to other on-the-air personalities and individuals to express outrage, demand apologies, but otherwise leave the relationship with Williams in place. This would have the possible effect of alienating more liberal, PC-demanding listeners, Islamic listeners, etc., who all donate a lot of money to stations every year. This could also jeopardize a lot of underwriting dollars, foundation dollars, etc., because those gifts are typically conditional, and might not be renewed if they become controversial.

2) Getting rid of Juan Williams, showing an obvious bias towards political correctness. This has had the result of alienating politically conservative listeners. This also, at least to my mind, calls to question whether NPR is about to "clean house" of any on-air personality who doesn't buy into the current political correctness orthodoxy. Also affected here will be donations from conservatives listeners to their local stations.

I can appreciate the tension, but if NPR's chief goal was journalistic integrity, they have obviously missed their calling. They have shown that they are not unlike Fox, CNN, or any other for-profit news entity. At the end of the day, their decisions are based upon revenue. This was a naked and blatant move to protect revenue sources. I absolutely do not approve from a moral stance, but I also wouldn't have been willing to write a check to make up what would have/could have been lost in response to the Williams utterance.

Conservatives like me have no choice really. I listen to NPR because it's the only place on the radio dial which provides decent hard news and analysis. They attempt to be free of bias, but they often fail. And that's just fine. I'm a big kid, I can listen critically.