Yesterday, NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.
This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings and my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims. In a debate with Bill O’Reilly, I revealed my fears to set up the case for not making rash judgments about people of any faith. I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber — as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals — are Christians, but we journalists don’t identify them by their religion.
And I made it clear that all Americans have to be careful not to let fears lead to violation of anyone’s constitutional rights, be it to build a mosque, carry the Koran or drive a cab without fear of having your throat slashed.
This was an honest, sensitive debate hosted by O’Reilly. At the start of the debate, Bill challenged me to tell him where he was wrong for stating the fact that “Muslims killed us there” in the 9/11 attacks. He made that initial statement on the ABC program “The View,” which caused two of the co-hosts to walk off the set. They did not return until O’Reilly apologized for not being clear that he did not mean the country was attacked by all Muslims but by extremist radical Muslims.
I took Bill’s challenge and began by saying that political correctness can cause people to become so paralyzed that they don’t deal with reality. And the fact is that it was a group of Muslims who attacked the US. I added that radicalism has continued to pose a threat to the United States and much of the world. That threat was expressed in court by the unsuccessful Times Square bomber, who bragged that he was just one of the first engaged in a “Muslim war” against the United States. There is no doubt that there’s a real war, and people are trying to kill us.
My point in recounting this debate is to show this was in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day. There was no bigotry, no provocation, no support for anti-Muslim sentiments of any kind.
Two days later, Ellen Weiss, my boss at NPR, called to say I had crossed the line, essentially accusing me of bigotry. She took the admission of my visceral fear of people dressed in Muslim garb at the airport as evidence that I am a bigot. She said there are people who wear Muslim garb to work at NPR and they are offended by my comments.
She never suggested that I had discriminated against anyone. Instead, she asked what did I mean? and I told her I said what I meant. Then she said she did not sense remorse from me. I said I made an honest statement. She informed me that I had violated NPR’s values for editorial commentary and she was terminating my contract as a news analyst. I pointed out that I had not made my comments on NPR.
I asked why she would fire me without speaking to me face to face, and she said there was nothing I could say to change her mind. The decision had been confirmed above her. There was no point to meeting in person.
To say the least, this is a chilling assault on free speech. Honest journalism and a free-flowing, respectful national conversation are being buried by ideological orthodoxy.
I say an ideological battle because my comments on “The O’Reilly Factor” are being distorted by the self-righteous, ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR. They are taking bits and pieces of what I said to go after me for daring to have a conversation with leading conservative thinkers. They loathe the fact that I appear on Fox News. They don’t notice that I am challenging Bill O’Reilly and trading ideas with Sean Hannity.
Years ago, NPR tried to stop me from going on “The Factor.” When I refused, they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk-show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.
This self-reverential attitude was on display several years ago, when NPR asked me to help them get an interview with President George W. Bush. When I got the interview, some in management expressed anger that I said to the president that Americans pray for him but don’t understand some of his actions.
Later, President Bush offered to do an NPR interview with me about race relations in America. NPR management refused. One NPR executive implied that I was in the administration’s pocket, which is a joke.
Gee, I guess NPR news executives never read my best-selling history of the civil-rights movement, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years.” I guess they never noticed that “ENOUGH,” my last book on the state of black leadership, found a place on The New York Times best-seller list.
NPR demanded that I either agree to let them control my appearances on Fox News and my writings or sign a new contract that removed me from their staff but allowed me to continue as a news analyst with an office at NPR. The idea was that they would be insulated against anything I said or wrote outside of NPR because they could say that I was not a staff member.
They cut my salary and diminished my on-air role. And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me.
Well, now that I no longer work for NPR, let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or staff. (I was the only black male on the air). One-party rule and one-sided thinking at NPR lead to enforced ideology, speech and writing. They lead to people, especially journalists, being sent to the gulag for raising the wrong questions and displaying independence of thought.
This is an edited version of Juan Williams’ column written for the Fox News Web site. The full version is available at fox news.com.