October 21, 2010
Editor:
Dave Uphoff
Political correctness was brought to the forefront this week when National Public Radio (NPR) fired their news analyst Juan Williams for his statement about Muslims. Appearing on the Bill O'Reilly show on the politically conservative Fox Network, Williams said he gets nervous when he sees people with Muslim garb on planes. NPR spokesperson Vivian Schiller was quoted as saying "We have people taking controversial opinions on our air all the time. ... The difference is those words generally come out of the mouths of the people we are interviewing; they don't come out of the mouths of our reporters or our news analysts." In other words, if you are a news analyst or reporter you have to keep your opinions to yourself. I don't know how long that policy has been in place at NPR but I do know that the late Daniel Schorr, who was a news commentator for NPR, certainly expressed his liberal opinions in his weekly commentaries on NPR. It appears that NPR allows its commentators to express their political opinions but not their news analysts. Why? And why are most of its commentators liberal? Mr. Williams was not performing his job as a news analyst or reporter for NPR in his interview with Bill O'Reilly. He has every right to express his opinion in that context. Due to the threat of terrorism, most Americans probably agree with Williams' comments and are distrustful of Muslims, especially since the Muslim world seems to be complacent about terrorism and have not made an effort to reign in the radical elements of Islam.
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NPR provides a valuable service to the public as its reporting tends to be in depth and thought provoking, unlike most other news media. However, critics have long maintained that NPR has been skewing its news towards the liberal side of politics. This latest episode would seem to confirm that suspicion. Now NPR is being targeted by conservative politicians to have their funding cut because of their perceived liberal bias. NPR's firing of Juan Williams for his conservative opinion was over-the-top political correctness and smacks of liberalism. Since NPR is publicly funded it would behoove itself to avoid actions that would accuse it of being either pro-liberal or pro-conservative. A publicly funded entity should not violate one of the most cherished tenets of our democracy - the right to freedom of speech.
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