Liberal Juan Williams Would Defund NPR

  • by:
  • 08/21/2022

The next time your Republican congressman claims that we really can’t stop appropriating federal funds for public broadcasting, insist that he read Juan Williams’ case for defunding National Public Radio in his new book Muzzled.

With amazing candor Williams lays out how outrageous it is that any public funds go to so-called public broadcasting.

“NPR journalism, he says,”has come to embody elitism, arrogance and the resentments of its highly educated upper-income managers and funders.  People like [National Public Radio execs] Vivian Schiller and Ellen Weiss came to think of themselves as smarter than anyone else in the room and were self-righteous in their pursuit of funding from the federal government and nonprofit groups.  

“That hunger for money led NPR’s former top fund-raiser to be caught in videotape sting operation engaged in a grubby attempt to get money from the Muslim Brotherhood, a group with links to terrorists.”

“The NPR fund-raising exec heard on that tape felt free to pander to the Muslim Brotherhood by disparaging Jews, calling the entire Tea Party racist, and announcing his pride in NPR’s decision to fire me…  Indeed, his comments opened a window on the mind-set of top NPR managers…”

“In the middle of the congressional debate over NPR funding, New York Democratic congressman Steve Israel sent out a fund-raising letter that included an appeal to liberals to send donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee so it could protect NPR as a counter to Republicans who wanted ‘the likes of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to dominate the airwaves.’ “

“The congressman made the case better than any conservative critic that NPR had become news by and for liberal Democrats.”

His book makes clear that the Juan Williams is no conservative.  

Painfully clear, in virtually every chapter between his case against NPR in the beginning up to the end of the book.

In fact, any conservative who tries to read the non-public broadcasting sections of the book is in for much intellectual irritation:  Williams cannot even conceive of the case for tax cuts or appreciate any threat from socialized medicine.  The former head of Planned Parenthood says she was a victim of “modern day McCarthyism.”  The House Committee on Un-American Activities sent citizens to jail.  Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are products of their lack of formal education, but the brilliant Al Franken has a degree from Harvard.  

Juan blindly accepts that the League of Women Voters is a politically centrist organization that still should be hosting presidential debates.  

And try this passage:  “On the right, sites such as Red State and the Drudge Report give attention to fringe movements—like the birthers—which gain legitimacy (and notoriety) in this polarized media landscape that is hungry for extreme stories.”

Read this stuff, and you’ll be dying to hear Brit Hume say, “Oh, that’s enough, Juan!”  

Nope. There is no doubting the liberalism of Juan Williams.  

But he might well be the nicest, most charming person I have ever met.  He also has a great sense of integrity.   He is a splendid writer.  
 
All of which makes reading his account of how NPR executives sought to ruin his life all the more painful.  And why?  Because he dared to appear on Fox News to enable that network to be, unlike public broadcasting, actually balanced.

In the opening pages of his book Williams details the shameless untruths spread by NPR executives amidst the public outrage over NPR’s firing him.   

I know the feeling.  

As chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (through which federal dollars flow), I was subjected to a similarly shameless campaign by some of the leaders of public broadcasting.  

But I suspect Williams has made the gang that runs NPR sorry they ever came after him.  In Muzzled he really does a number on these arrogant elitists who control NPR—and indirectly on our elected leaders who make their comfortable world possible.

Every Republican member of Congress who enables all this to go on should have to answer Williams’ case against taxpayer funding of public broadcasting.

But what of the load of the blather in between?  Fox may need this stuff for balance, but Williams’ liberal politics I can do without. 

Image:
ADVERTISEMENT

Opinion

View All

JACK POSOBIEC: The Right's response to the 'bloodbath' media outrage was 'abysmal' and 'weak'

"They are controlling you. You are acting like controlled opposition and you need to wake up and you ...

Barack Obama stages surprise visit to UK for private meeting with UK PM Rishi Sunak

“President Obama’s team made contact and obviously the prime minister was very happy to to meet with ...

'Woke' beliefs correlated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, unhappiness in Finland: study

The correlation was most pronounced amongst female college students in non-STEM related fields....

ETHAN PECK: The ADL smeared me as antisemitic for opposing the WEF and UN, even though I'm Jewish

It didn’t matter to the ADL that I’m an Israeli-American Jew and staunch supporter of Israel, and tha...