NPR Defends Firing Williams as Criticism Mounts
By BRIAN STELTER and ELIZABETH JENSEN'
Published: October 22, 2010
Of the thousands of complaints that have saturated NPR in the wake of Juan Williams’s firing earlier this week, some of the most telling have been from callers describing themselves as long-time “viewers” of NPR who warn that they are going to “stop watching.” NPR, of course, does not have viewers, it has listeners. But the public radio organization has come under severe criticism — largely from people who are not listeners, it believes — for having fired Mr. Williams, an analyst who was employed by both NPR and Fox News when he said on Fox that he felt fearful when he saw people in “Muslim garb” on an airplane.
Some have said his comment was bigoted, but others have rallied to Mr. Williams’s defense, and many conservatives have seized on his firing to resurrect their war against public broadcasting.
In an interview on Friday, Vivian Schiller, NPR’s chief executive, defended the decision to dismiss Mr. Williams and said it was not the product of political or financial pressures.
His contract was terminated, she said, because “he had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people’s air.”
On one such occasion last year, Mr. Williams said on Fox that Michelle Obama has “got this ‘Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress’ thing going,” an allusion to a leader of the black power movement of the 1960s.
In each instance, Ms. Schiller said, “We called him on it, we had a discussion, we asked him not to do it again.” NPR’s ethics code states that journalists “should not express views” in other outlets, like TV shows, that “they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.”
People deserve second chances, Ms. Schiller said, but “we made the decision here because, at a certain point, if someone keeps not following your guidance, you have to make a break. And that’s what we did.”
“And that is the sole reason,” she added. “This is not a First Amendment issue.”
Many supporters of Mr. Williams have sought to frame his firing as a First Amendment issue, especially those appearing on Fox, which reportedly gave Mr. Williams a new three-year contract on Thursday.
Fox has been something of a home base for the anti-NPR campaign, with hourly reports about the controversy on both its news and opinion programs. Mr. Williams hosted “The O’Reilly Factor” on Friday night, the same venue where, on Monday, he made the comments that led to his firing on Wednesday.
Ms. Schiller said she perceived a media “overreaction” to Mr. Williams’s firing, one that had even set off threats against her children. A camera crew from Fox News followed her from her home on Friday, she added.
Before joining NPR in January 2009, Ms. Schiller was the senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com.
There was a palpable sense of unease within NPR on Friday about whether there would be more fallout from Mr. Williams’s firing. But Ms. Schiller said the board that governed NPR had expressed its “full support” of the action. And Dave Edwards, the director and general manager of WUWM in Milwaukee, and vice chairman of the NPR board, said that “every board member I spoke to today is supportive of Vivian and the decision that was made by the management team.”
Mr. Edwards said the board would want to discuss with her “at the appropriate time the facts that led up to the decision,” but that no meeting had been set.
Ms. Schiller said she regretted that the firing had become a “distraction” for local stations during a preplanned pledge drive week. The timing has been a source of concern for stations, but there were no indications on Friday that it was influencing fund-raising.
Jennifer Houlihan, a spokeswoman for New York Public Radio, said the issue “was not hurting” pledges. “We’re hitting or surpassing our goal at this point,” she said.
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