Former NPR new analyst Juan Williams joined the call in a Fox News appearance today to defund NPR in the wake of his firing, saying “if they want to compete in the marketplace, they should compete in the marketplace. They don’t need public funds.”
Williams continued that NPR tries “to make it out like, ‘you know what? We are a public jewel and we need the protection of the federal government,'” but that’s “nonsense. They are on the federal dole is what it is. And they better admit it and step up. If they want to compete.”
Watch:
Williams was fired yesterday after commenting on The O’Reilly Factor earlier this week:
Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don’t want to get your ego going. But I think you’re right. I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality.
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 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.
Williams also wrote a post for the Fox News website yesterday called “I Was Fired for Telling the Truth,” and calling his ousting “evidence of one-party rule and one sided thinking at NPR that leads to enforced ideology, speech and writing. It leads to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.”
The firing, which has caused some outrage on the right, has also resulted in calls for NPR to be defunded. Mike Huckabee, for example, released a statement yesterday calling the firing “a form of censorship” and saying that “it is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR.”
