Media Capitulation: If Juan Williams Is Fair Game….

By Pamela Geller
Volume 21, Number 1 (Fall 2010)
Issue theme: "The menace of Islam"


Over the last few days, on the news channels and the net, it has been wall-to-wall coverage of the Juan Williams firing by the tools over at National Public Radio. NPR was serving the hydra-headed, Hamas-supporting Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which called on them to take action against Williams.

I am grateful for this high-profile incident. Much like with the Ground Zero mosque affair, Americans have suddenly become aware of something quite terrible — a sea change, a profound transformation of a basic assumption, and a stunning reversal of their very basic unalienable rights. Their sensibilities are shaken. How could such a major seismic shift be kept hidden, kept so secret, until suddenly Juan Williams, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, gets fired for telling the truth? Is it any wonder that recent polls show that the majority of Americans no longer trust the media? That is a good thing.

To Williams’ point, we have an entire government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), dedicated to protecting us from terrorists who are largely Muslim. We have torturous security procedures at every stage of air travel. We bear unfathomable costs in taxpayer dollars, but worse, in the surrender of privacy and individual rights because of Islamic jihad: because of the 9/11 Muslim terrorists; and the British Muslims who planned to blow up seven planes and kill 4,000 Americans and/or British people in the name of Islam in 2006; and because of Richard Reid, the Muslim with the exploding shoes; and the Christmas day bomber, the Muslim with the exploding crotch.

And yet in watching the mainstream media coverage of Juan Williams affair, we witness the fact that the media still cannot face up to its own capitulation. It’s all over the airwaves, but no one will discuss what is actually happening — the loss of the freedom of speech to Islamic supremacism and domination. This is a deadly fight — Islam in the West and its suppression of free speech.

When the horror of jihad is discussed, it is always in the context of a “fringe” element among Muslims committing violent jihad. The “extremists” are slaughtering people every day across the world in the name of Islam. But aren’t those who are destroying our constitutional republic, shutting us down, attacking free speech and demonizing the good and the truth tellers the real extremists and radicals? Isn’t CAIR, as well as the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust the real extremists? The only difference between them and the military wing of Islam is their weapon of choice. Islamic supremacist groups in Western countries viciously attack our unalienable rights and chip away at our very legal and societal foundations.

CAIR et al. slaughter human thought. They are destroyers, as ruinous and destructive as the organizations of their fellow Muslims: Al Qaeda, Hezb’Allah, Hamas, Al-Muhajiroun, MILF, Islamic jihad, Fatah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Armed Islamic Group, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and all the rest of them.

This is war. And fighting that war has been Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), the Muslim Brotherhood’s man in Congress, who called Juan Williams, a black American, a “bigot” and “un-American.” Considering the notorious Islamic history of Muslims keeping blacks as slaves (abid) — to this very day in North Africa — it is the height of black humor (no pun intended) that this Islamic supremacist would call an honorable African American a “bigot.” Ellison is twisting the very definition of “American” to some perverted idea of sharia. This is rich coming from a man who took money from a group that is the American wing of an organization whose stated aim is “eliminating and destroying Western Civilization from within.”

Keith Ellison’s trip to the haj was financed by the Muslim American Society, which has been identified as the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Keith Ellison has attended pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic hatefests. And it was the Hamas-supporting Muslim Brotherhood front CAIR that got Juan Williams fired.

Why aren’t the media discussing how these extremists, like Ellison, are destroying this country?

The traitors who walk among us are removing their masks. See who is conspiring against our freedoms. See who is siding with our mortal enemies.

America, pay attention! ■




 

NPR’s Race Problem

As Viewed by Former NPR “News & Notes” Host Farai Chideya

Even before Juan got greased (deservedly or not), there was the horrendous way NPR fumbled the “too black/too strong” “News and Notes” program. I loved N&N and nothing has taken its place… . Right now it’s being spun as liberal NPR messing up and conservative Fox pouncing on them.The real situation is much more involved than the usual battle lines. I like NPR, but I do not love it and one reason I do not is the lack of racial diversity in its nearly lily White, upper middle class programming….

If NPR had such clear concerns over how Juan Williams fit into their organization, in the amorphous role of “news analyst,” then they had an opportunity to let him go a long time ago. They could have decided he didn’t fit their needs, and moved on in a less polarized time. But by firing him now, in this instance, after years of sitting uncomfortably with his dual roles on NPR and Fox, they made a few crucial errors. They chose to fire him for doing what he has done for years… be a hype man for Bill O’Reilly. Why now? And they also showed tone-deaf communication with member stations by firing Williams during a pledge drive season.

Juan Williams pointedly said in his comments after the firing that he was the only black man on air at NPR…. and not a reporter at that. Guest hosting on Fox, he also called himself a “loyal employee” of NPR, and implied the network was run by a “far-left mob.” (If so, I didn’t meet any in my four years at NPR. It’s run by a Beltway cohort, perhaps, but not “far-left.”) Do I think NPR fired him because he is black? No. Do I think NPR kept Williams on for years, as the relationship degraded, because he is a black man? Absolutely. Williams’ presence on air was a fig-leaf for much broader and deeper diversity problems at the network. NPR needs to hire more black men in house on staff as part of adding diverse staff across many ethnicities and races. It also needs, broadly, a diversity upgrade that doesn’t just focus on numbers, but on protocols for internal communication. Among the revelations in this incident is that the Vice President of News fired Williams by phone without giving him the opportunity to come into the office and discuss it.

After I was let go from hosting an African-American issues show at NPR, I walked away relatively quietly, though with a series of questions about how power was allocated and shared at the network, and whether diversity truly mattered to management. Although the focus right now is on whether NPR should be defunded (God no!), I would like to see a little more light shine on how NPR deals with diversity. It has a new diversity czar, Keith Woods, and I hope he is empowered to look at the issue broadly and respected by management.

This country needs NPR, now more than ever. But it needs an NPR and media, broadly, that are adventurous rather than expedient when it comes to reporting on a divided America, and cultivating the most diverse staff, and audience.

Source: The Domino Theory by Jeff Winbush


About the author

Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of www.atlasshrugs.com and the Executive Director of Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) and of the
Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI). She is a regular columnist for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government and Big Journalism, American Thinker, and other on-line publications. She’s the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of the book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon & Schuster).