Juan Williams and His Foxy Friends

The cancelation of Juan Williams’ contract was handled poorly by NPR and by Williams. Over the years I have grown to respect Williams as an objective professional journalist. But recently I have witnessed a transformation, perhaps in part due to his camaraderie with Fox and friends. Williams now follows the money and gets a huge pay raise as he smoothly transitions to Fox. I find myself wondering if Williams could have pushed the envelope a bit. Last week his close colleague Bill O'Reilly made hay out of his own bigoted remarks on "The View". Fox made no apologies for O’Reilly. Instead, Fox and friends have capitalized on the event, as they characteristically do when anyone pushes back at their subjective views. Subjectivity has no place in professional journalism. Subjective media outlets on the left and right are now aggressively usurping the role of objective journalism nationwide. This is causing serious injury to our democratic processes and the very fabric of our American society. NPR and PBS are two of the last sources in our country for objective reporting and critical analysis. We can’t afford to lose either one. Let's hope NPR can learn from their personnel mistakes and we can all put this issue to rest.