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NPR fires Juan Williams for Fox commentary less than a week after getting a million plus donation from a Soros group

October 21, 2010 06:33

Just days after Soros gave a million dollars to Media Matters to attack Fox News and less than a week after Soros’ Open society Institute gave NPR over a million dollars, NPR fires Juan Williams over remarks he made on the O’Reilly Factor on Fox.

Is this a warning to other journalists to stay away from Fox?

Just four days ago Warner Todd Huston at Big Journalism broke the story about NPR receiving $1.8 million from the Soros funded Open Society Institute to “for a project being called “Impact of Government.” The project is planning to add at least 100 reporters across the country to cover local state house politics to fill the holes left by the firing of so many local reporters due to the contraction in the field of journalism over the last decade.”

Soros funds a myriad of leftist organizations through the Open Society Institute including this partial list from Discover the Networks.org:

Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America’s Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); Campus Progress; Free Exchange on Campus; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; Democracy 21; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Immigrant Funders’ Collaborative; the Moving Ideas Network; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the No Peace Without Justice International Committee; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; the Abortion Access Project; People of Color In Crisis; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; the Gay Straight Alliance Network; the Youth Law Center; Planned Parenthood

In the last two days Glenn Beck did his show on George Soros and some of the groups he funds and invited him on the show to go one on one with Beck. Beck calls Soros the ‘spooky dude’ and compares him to the emperor in Star Wars.

That prompted Soros to write a check for a million dollars to Media Matters for America which is a leftist internet group dedicated to attacking conservatives and all things conservative.

The New York Times reported the Media Matters donation with this:

In a statement obtained by The Caucus, the organization says it plans to use the money to intensify its efforts to hold the Fox host Glenn Beck and others on the cable news channel accountable for their reporting.

“Fox has transformed itself into a 24-7 G.O.P. attack machine, dividing Americans through fear-mongering and falsehoods and undermining the legitimacy of our government for partisan political ends,” the group will say in the statement, to be released Wednesday afternoon.

In an accompanying statement, Mr. Soros, a billionaire who has a history of supporting liberal politicians and causes, accused Fox News hosts of “incendiary rhetoric” and said he hoped that his money would be used “in an effort to more widely publicize the challenge Fox News poses to civil and informed discourse in our democracy.” (emphasis added)

The MEDIAite website reports that NPR fired Williams over these remarks he made on the O’Reilly Factor on Fox:

“Well, actually, I hate to say this to you because I don’t want to get your ego going. But I think you’re right. I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality.

I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the 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.”

So is this political correctness run amok? Or is this something a littler more sinister prompted by the big bucks from the spooky dude George Soros.