Media Matters, which just received a large cash infusion from George Soros, has been trying to get Juan Williams for years, and now it accomplished its goal of getting Williams off NPR.
But Media Matters’ thirst for absolute uniformity of opinion at NPR is not quenched. It wants Mara Liasson gone as well, at least if she continues to appear on Fox News.
The most prominent blogger at Media Matters, Eric Boehlert, posts the following:
News that Juan Williams’ contract with NPR was terminated over comments he made about Muslims while appearing on Fox News shines a spotlight on the radio network’s evergreen controversy: Its continued affiliation with Fox News. Specifically, NPR’s Mara Liasson and her long-running association with Fox News has often raised questions. This might be the proper time for NPR to finally address that thorny issue.
I’m not suggesting Liasson has said anything as offensive as Williams, or that she has that kind of track record while appearing on Fox. I’m just saying that if you look at NPR’s code of ethics, there’s simply no way Liasson should be making appearances on Fox
Notice something interesting.
No conservatives are trying to prevent people from appearing on NPR, but liberal interest groups and their media outlets are trying to prevent people from appearing on Fox News.
There is a real threat to freedom in this country, and it does not come from conservatives. Media Matters is just the symptom, not the disease.
——————————————–
Related Posts:
Juan Williams Was Fox News’ “Lawn Jockey”
Juan Williams Fired For Acknowledging Negative Stereotypes
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
No comment from Boehlert regarding Nina Totenberg's comments:
On Jesse Helms: "…if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”
On the Bush Admin: " It was much more like the Mob."
On the Tea Parties: "any cockamamie proposition in America will have at least 25 percent of those polled supporting it."
On the Bush Tax Cuts: "…I just think it’s immoral.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/250653/what-about-totenberg-brian-bolduc
All Things Considered now All Things Soros
It's kind of inconvenient to the left's caricature of FoxNews as a one-note GOP organ that it keeps having all those liberals on it.
So, they've arrived at an ideal solution; get the liberals fired.
Totenberg was a notorious plagiarist back in the day, but her ultra-left contacts including a plugged-in husband kept her in her job, unqualified and bigoted though she is.
And George can keep pouring in mega-bucks to well-known teat-hangers like Media Mutters and Think Process as long as he wants, but he'll never buy his chance to short the dollar, which is what he did to the pound and walked away a billionaire. Not if the American People can squelch these Potemkin blogwhores….!
Also noteworthy: the habit of labeling non-conformity as "unethical."
NPR has a code of ethics? Who knew.
Media Matters also "discredited" the notion that the Employee Free Choice ACT (what an name!) doesn't disenfranchise workers.
"It only allows workers to decide whether they want a secret ballot or not, by preventing employers from insisting on one."
Right. So, to have a secret ballot–to protect workers from union pressure–they first must publicly vote to have one–in the face of union pressure.
I hate the far left. They've pushed every form of liberal other then themselves into the conservative movement; we've even absorbed many of the 60s liberals. It's amazing.
Sorry if this isn't on topic enough; I figured general leftist intolerance was up for grabs. 🙂
Orwell's predictions have come true. We live in an age where ignorance is intelligence (personified in Obama) and repression is freedom of expression (NPR.) And the pigs in Washington run the farm.
Seeking to inhibit, or prohibit liberals from appearing on Fox may be smart strategy, considering the current political climate. If mainstream, previously politically uninvolved viewers listen to liberals, they risk enlarging the enemy camp. If liberals debate honestly (?) and reflect the left's true intentions to a larger national audience, they'll lose elections. Better to just discuss leftist ideaology among friends who know better than to share it with the unwashed.
Have you ever read them? It's hard to keep a straight face; Media Matters is the KCNA of media commentary.
The left is merely proving that Fox News really is fair and balanced.
Purging NPR.
Totalitarian movements have a history of starting small, growing larger … and then purifying itself via purges of its ranks until its leaders are left with a steel core – a cadre – of true believers who are capable of virtually anything. The Nazis went through this phase; the Communists went through this phase.
It now appears that NPR is going through this phase.
Wasn't Helen Thomas fired for speaking her views?
It looks like the same thing to me.
The tag line on symptoms and disease is good.
When NPR begins to answer the question, "What emboldens us to behave as we do?" they will be on the road to recovery.
In the meantime, the rest of us can quietly note, "It's the culture, stupid!"
Suppressing speech and thought makes them powerful and public. You want to get rid of something, you give it its head. Gamaliel advised: if it is not of God, it will fade out of its own weakness, but if it is of God, nothing can stop it.
A well-known parallel fact is that the best place to hide is in public view.
A personal comment: this is one of a handful of the finest, highest-minded blogs on the web. Thanks.
Wasn't Helen Thomas fired for speaking her views?
It looks like the same thing to me.
Juan was fired more for where he spoke his views, not his views. The same thing will likely happen to Mara.
Try reading for comprehension next time. I think the good professor would assign you a flunking grade for that comment.
Nice hit Randy at October 22, 2010 11:23 AM. Bullseye!
And V the K at October 22, 2010 12:25 PM, I think you are on to something.
This was nothing more, nothing less than a case of friendly fire, and what's worse, it was obviously NOT accidental. It was clearly an attempted professional assassination by NPR for political purposes. A purge. It is a specialty of the left. Uncle Joe would be proud! So would Uncle Mao.
Let's not forget that when this Administration was coming in, Alan Colmes was also a target of the left and he "dutifully walking away from what the left derisively saw as his "sidekick" role on Hannity and Colmes.
Was Alan their first big victim in the Obama era?
It is hard for me not to imagine so, given the absolute intensity of contempt with which the progressive left viewed him!
Even Al Franken, another erstwhile stand-up comic, publicly spat at Alan by calling him a "milquetoast moderate."
Meanwhile, recall that the Mao-loving Anita Dunn was made the Obama Communications Director.
They had big plans to implement the new "Fairness Doctrine" . . . first step, strip the right of its dominant market position on certain (radio) airwaves, while gearing up for a frontal assault on Fox News Channel.
Alan still has his radio show on Fox.
But that is him alone, and the connection to Fox radio doesn't bother the progressives as much as the drumbeat of negative exposure that progressive ideas got when they were, on a daily basis, being juxtaposed against an immediate and withering conservative response.
THAT is what I think has bothered the Ds so much about Fox. Over time their best efforts could not and cannot hold a candle when measured up against the disinfecting other side of the story.
Recall that Anita Dunn was the one who orchestrated the first salvos against Fox. But her stupid frontal assault failed miserably.
It was then, I believe, that their strategy (or should I say "tactic") focused again on one-by-one, picking off all the libs appearing on the Fox News Channel, subjecting them over and over to intense pressure, and anticipating that eventually a final assault against the network could somehow be re-launched and succeed.
The lefties in control over at NPR were merely playing out what they probably saw as their duty when the tried to professionally assassinate Juan Williams by firing him.
The war . . . the real war for progressives . . . the war for the control of American public opinion . . . is going very badly for them, and this latest attack on Juan Williams in particular points out just how poorly.
Even Democrats are noting how they misjudged. They are merely the latest victims of left wing "groupthink."
As a result, NPR is now in the sights of the right. But Republicans would be making the same mistake if they engaged in any effort to try and put editorial control on NPR, or to try and pressure them to change their views.
The answer is rather simple . . . defund. Going forward, there should not be one more dime of taxpayer money given to them. Not one.
And, there should be an effort to get a green eyeshade look at their tax-exempt status, given their obvious political activity.
Let 'em go the way of Air America.
In my codebook, "NPR" equals "ratfilth hypocrites". You don't need an Enigma machine to figure that one out. What a bunch of closet fascists!
It's neither solely Media Matters nor new. In college in my teens and again in my 30's, if newspapers were stolen or flyers defaced, it was always (no exceptions!) liberals vandalizing conservative outlets. If a speaker was shouted down, it was liberals doing the shouting. If a prominent liberal were invited to campus to debate a prominent conservative, a conservative group did the inviting. Every time.
Liberals have been a threat to basic human liberty since at least the 60's (when anti-communist liberals largely ceased to exist).
Leftists hold NPR in high regard. They think that by allowing NPR analysts to also appear on Fox lends some of NPR's credibility and respectability to Fox. This latest, leftist "victory" of getting Juan Williams off Fox is no victory at all. To grow their brand, they need to bring moderates into their fold. And they can't do this by allowing left-leaning analysts to only address people in left-leaning venues.
Trochilus wrote, They had big plans to implement the new "Fairness Doctrine" . . . first step, strip the right of its dominant market position on certain (radio) airwaves, while gearing up for a frontal assault on Fox News Channel.
What if the midterms were shaping up as an endorsement of, or at least acquiescence to, Obamism? At the very least IMHO, the FCC would be using the Williams and O'Reilly incidents as pretexts to involve itself. Quite possibly the Fairness Doctrine would be back in both FCC and Congressional versions, with goodies for the plaintiffs' bar written into the legislation.
gs . . . "What if the midterms were shaping up as an endorsement of, or at least acquiescence to, Obamism?"
Heh. I'd be out on the ledge!
Seriously though, I'm not sure you can reconcile the two. Presuming that the Obama plan had somehow gone forward full steam ahead, and we were currently caught up in the throws of green-eyeshade evaluations by the thought police, Juan Williams might very well have been more circumspect.
I believe the public mood counts for a lot in what media types are willing and unwilling to say.
Very few people are courageous enough to openly draw fire by expressing their momentary inner thoughts, especially folks like Juan Williams, who are intelligent and resourceful enough to have risen to the near top of a very tough profession. He was being introspective, as a way of making a very valid point.
But it sounds like a "cop-out" to suggest that the incident might not have occurred were things somehow topsy-turvy. So assuming your scenario . . . yes, I think you're right.
The FCC and the House Committee would be champing at the bit to climb all over this with a hearing or two or five, and issue reported evaluations, especially condemning O'Reilly's comment. There would be more than just talk of getting him off the air.
But, alas, the very thought of Henry Waxman "holding court" in everyone's living room is so horrifying, as to risk sending me right out on the ledge again!
So, I'm going to stop now . . . except to add that the fact we are not being subjected to that Waxman drumbeat is a hopeful sign, and the exposure of the agenda of the left, given here by Professor Jacobson, and elsewhere by others, is quite heartening.
tim maguire: anti-communist liberals didn't cease to exist, they joined with conservatives against the far-left threat.
many of them now call themselves neoconservatives. I have a love/hate relationship with neocons; somethings I like, some things I hate.
Please don't be snarky (I admit I'm not the sharpest knife in the box), but please explain what is the difference between what Helen Thomas's firing and Juan Williams's firing? Is it because HT's statements were made with hostility & Juan Williams' were not?
I'll take a stab, Andrea. No snark: Juan Williams, by my reading of the transcript, was not actually making any comment about Muslims. He was talking about himself, and expressing his dismay that even he, noted non-bigot, felt anxiety when confronted by the sight of airline passengers in what we in the West, based on our experiences and exposure of the past couple of decades, might reasonably consider to be the dress of radical Muslims.
Thomas, on the other hand, expressed her views on Israeli Jews thusly: "Tell them to get the hell out of Israel," and "Go home" (to wherever they came from, which leaves out a whole bunch who were born there). The difference is clear to me. Thomas wasn't saying, "I'm not proud of how I feel, but this is in fact how I feel"; she was saying, "You [Israeli Jews] are wrong to be where you are, on the ground where your religion was first anchored and from which you were driven. Palestinians, with the same general history except for the whole being-driven-out-and-murdered-in-your-millions part, are that ground's only true heirs. Get out!"
I think it's possible to believe that the creation of modern Israel was a mistake and want a 2-state solution and all that, without being evil, spiteful, or anti-semitic. (I THINK.) But it seems clear to me that Thomas was not framing her opinion that way.
Juan Williams was purged, that's all. The airbrushing is still to come.