My bet – millions. He certainly was not in violation of his contract.
WSJ editorial this AM - NPR Finally Gets Its Man
To fire someone because he said, even on television, that seeing passengers in Muslim garb on an airplane made him "nervous" would be preposterous. This is "bigotry"? Especially in that Mr. Williams then told Mr. Reilly it would be wrong to call all Muslims "extremists" because some are terrorists, just as Timothy McVeigh's murders do not indict all Christians.
No, as Ms. Schiller made clear in her memo to Mr. Williams's former colleagues at NPR, "this isn't the first time we have had serious concerns about some of Juan's public comments."
Mr. Williams has been sacked from NPR for engaging in a patter of . . . opinion. This, Ms. Schiller, noted is a "critical distinction" because of NPR's "ethics code" that its "analysts" not participate in shows "that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis."
Translation from the Orwellian: They finally found a way to get rid of Juan Williams.
It has long been one of the most open secrets in the world of punditry (which needless to say, includes NPR's "analysts"), that NPR's progressive political base was unhappy with Mr. Williams's appearances on Fox as existentially incompatible with their worldview.
Meanwhile, Cokie Roberts, another longtime NPR analyst, sat for years on ABC's Sunday morning talk show, cheerfully expressing moderately left-of-center opinions more or less in the same ballpark as most of those offered by Mr. Williams. And Nina Totenberg, NPR's Supreme Court reporter, has long offered left-wing opinion on the show "Inside Washington," not to mention in her own reporting.
Here's the NPR CEO – she later apologized for the crack about how Williams should see a psychiatrist.
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