Patrick Maines:
OK, so right off the bat let's deal with what NPR's firing of Juan Williams is, and what it is not. It is a free speech issue, but it is not a First Amendment issue. This is an important distinction because while many First Amendment issues involve freedom of speech, and many free speech issues involve the First Amendment, it is not the case that all free speech issues are First Amendment issues.
At bottom, the Speech Clause of the First Amendment is a proscription on what government can do to the media, not on what the media can do themselves. As a practical matter what this means is that NPR's management had the right to do what they did, and that, were this matter to go before a court, its resolution would not turn on First Amendment case law.
This said, the wisdom of the action taken, and what it suggests about the future of freedom of expression generally, are very much at issue here.
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Though the dust hasn't even begun to settle, it's already clear what many people, of varying political stripes, think of the way NPR has handled the Williams affair: They think it's a disaster. As Howard Kurtz put it in a Daily Beast piece: "His firing has backfired, handing FOX a victory and making Williams a symbol of liberal intolerance — on the very day NPR announced a grant from George Soros that it never should have accepted."
Indeed, the Soros revelation, combined with Republican and (especially) conservative antipathy for taxpayer support of PBS and NPR, guarantee that the Williams flap is not going away any time soon. As lamented here, there has been a coordinated and richly financed effort underway for months that has, as part of its aim, a substantial increase in government funding for public media generally, and that would oblige PBS member stations to redirect their news programs to more local coverage — the very thing that Soros's contribution is designed to facilitate at NPR.
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Here's Williams' comment: "Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. But when I get on a 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."
And here's Schiller's: "Juan Williams should have kept his feelings about Muslims between himself and his psychiatrist or his publicist."
Under pressure, Schiller later apologized for her remark, but going forward that may not mean much. Put it this way, of these two comments which one do you think is the most mean-spirited and intemperate? And of the acts at issue — Williams' comments or his firing — which one do you think does more damage to NPR?
Yes, I think so too.
Schiller's statement was also unprofessional. The reasons given for firing Williams were incoherent given that other people working for NPR get to give liberal opinions without consequence.
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