When Gary Knell became the chief executive officer of National Public Radio in December of 2011, his goal was to “calm the waters” after the publicly funded network had endured two high-profile scandals: the firing of Juan Williams and the video of a fund-raising executive slamming the Republican Party as “seriously racist, racist people” while accepting donations from a group that was purportedly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
But on Monday, 20 months later, Knell announced his decision to join the National Geographic Society as its president and CEO, even though that meant leaving NPR, which he said "is and will always be a beacon of journalistic integrity, commitment, and courage,” a claim NewsBusters has repeatedly demonstrated as false.
Juan Williams
Laura Bassett at The Huffington Post reported Tuesday that Fox Business would not air a TV advertisement by the feminist group Ultraviolet that called for the termination of Fox contributors Lou Dobbs, Erick Erickson, and Juan Williams.
"Lou Dobbs has a problem," an announcer declares in the ad, over tiny out-of-context clips of the men speaking. "Women are winning the bread. Even his own network isn't safe from this source of lady breadwinners. Tell Fox to retire Lou Dobbs, Erick Erickson, and Juan Williams and spare them the pain of equality."
On Tuesday's Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor and Emmy-winning journalist Juan Williams accused the Obama Justice Department of having "criminalized journalism" by investigating Fox News correspondent James Rosen. Williams claimed that such probing by the administration “makes it difficult for journalists to do business” and posed the question, “How do you do journalism if you are treated as a criminal for asking for information?” [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
This revelation, of course, comes close on the heels of the DOJ seizing phone and email records of several Associated Press employees during a leak investigation concerning a CIA operation to foil a terror bomb plot. However, in the Rosen case, the Justice Department has “specifically gone after Rosen and Fox as co-conspirators in the case,” according to Williams, whereas “there is no such listing of AP as a co-conspirator.” In all his years of reporting, Williams said that this particular case against Rosen “stands out in a bright way to me” because it shows that the administration is trying to criminalize certain types of reporting.
Lefty Fox News analyst Juan Williams is in hot water after it was discovered that a column he’d written for a political insider publication contained plagiarized material.
According to a report by Salon.com, a Feb. 18 piece that Williams wrote for The Hill newspaper copied almost word-for-word from a study by the far-left Center for American Progress on the subject of immigration and Social Security.
During yesterday’s edition of Fox News Sunday, Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, who wrote the book "The Price of Politics" on how Obama handled the debt-ceiling fiasco in 2011, explained again to his media colleagues that it was a White House initiative to use a hatchet with these budgetary matters in the form of sequestration.
When Fox host Chris Wallace suggested the news media would highlight every spending-cut casualty expected from sequestration, liberal analyst Juan Williams agreed: "I think the news media will play into that at every level." Wallace asked Woodward to repeat his reporting:
Just like his counterparts at MSNBC on Tuesday night, Fox News Channel political analyst Juan Williams thought it fit to continue forwarding the left's main attack on Ann Romney - that she just can't relate the average American woman. Minutes after Mrs. Romney's RNC speech, Williams bluntly remarked that she "looked to me like a corporate wife...[T]he stories she told about struggles – ah, it's hard for me to believe. I mean, she's a very rich woman. And I know that, and America knows that." [audio available here; video below the jump]
When anchor Megyn Kelly asked the former NPR personality what he meant by this loaded term, Williams claimed that Mrs. Romney wasn't "speaking, I think, for the tremendous number of single women in this country or married women...she did not convince me that, you know what? I understand the struggles of American women in general."
As NewsBusters previously reported, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu on Tuesday laughed in Andrea Mitchell's face when she defended Barack Obama's use of bogus outsourcing reports about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Continuing this trend of calling out Obama shills in the media, Sununu on Fox News's Hannity Thursday told Juan Williams, "Don't let your blind loyalty to this President make you sound foolish" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Juan Williams hit it off with the I-man on the July 11 broadcast of Imus in the Morning. Apparently, Williams, who was fired by NPR in 2010, is the "foil" for the conservative personalities on Fox News. When Imus asked if Fox News was "right wing," Williams responded with "given what I'm up against, I think that's the way it comes across. If you're arguing politics with Krauthammer and Brit Hume or Eric Boiling or Dana Perino–everybody’s on the right so you say, hey, wait a minute there’s another way to think of this. But, in general, I don't know I would define myself as a liberal. I know most of the audience wouldn’t --But obviously, that is my job to be a foil for strong right-wing views."
However, while midway through the interview when Imus and Williams were talking about the real criticisms with Fox News, Mr. Williams reiterated that Fox News does disseminate serious content with journalistic integrity, especially in their six o'clock slot [Special Report], but then made a bizarre statement concerning how he was able to be on the network due to his conservativeleanings. This coming from a man who claims to be "foil" for "right wing views."
A fight broke out between New Media and Old Media on Fox News's Hannity program Wednesday that has the entire blogosphere abuzz.
When Fox News's Juan Williams, in the midst of a discussion about the national security leaks controversy, arrogantly told syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, "I'm a real reporter, I am not a blogger," all hell broke loose (video follows with transcript and commentary, relevant section at minute 4:50):
Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller reports a new E-book by RealClearPolitics’ Washington editor Carl Cannon and executive editor Tom Bevan contains a juicy media tidbit. During preparation for the January 16 Myrtle Beach GOP debate, Fox News anchor Bret Baier and his producers voiced concern that if Juan Williams asked Newt Gingrich a question about black Americans demanding “jobs, not food stamps,” that Gingrich could hit back hard, “attempting to turn Williams into a prop, as he had done with both Chris Wallace and Baier in a debate in Ames, Iowa.”
But Williams persisted in his planned spin. “I need to ask it this way...because it’s offensive.”
So a guy whose contract was terminated by NPR on a phony pretext for not toeing the liberal line enough, including writing a book ("Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It") which indicted the modern civil-rights movement for, well, undermining Black America, now appears to want eliminate "Constitution" and "Founding Fathers" from the lexicon of Republican candidates -- and possibly, it would appear, from political discussion in general -- because, well, they're racial code words. How ironic.
That is what Juan Williams outrageously claims in his latest column at the Hill today (bold is mine):
Not "racist," mind you -- "racialist."
Turns out "racialist" is an actual word, though I had my doubts after hearing it on Geraldo Rivera's WABC radio show Jan. 19. (video and audio clips after page break)