Ellen Weiss - Juan Williams Controversy

Juan Williams Controversy

On January 6, 2011, Weiss agreed with NPR to resign from her position for her role in the October 2010 firing of political analyst Juan Williams for his comments on the Fox News program, The O'Reilly Factor. Discussing terrorism on the show, Williams said he gets "nervous" when he sees people in "Muslim garb" boarding a plane; Williams appeared to make the comment in the context of a larger point, against generalizing all Muslims as terrorists, and some of the later debate around his remark centered on whether it should be understood in this larger context.

Weiss personally called Williams to fire him immediately over the phone on the basis of violating a provision in the NPR ethics guidelines against its staff expressing personal opinions.

Although an independent review process concluded that "Williams' contract was terminated in accordance with its terms", an e-mail statement from the NPR board of directors expressed "concerns regarding the speed and handling of the termination process" and said that led to "certain actions... with regard to management involved in Williams' contract termination."

Concerning her consequent resignation, which ended her 28 year career at the radio network, Weiss called her decision "extremely hard" but defended her firing of Williams: "What I would say is that the decision to terminate the Juan Williams contract by NPR, of which I was a participant, was based on the highest journalistic standards."

For his part, Williams accepted a $2 million contract with Fox News, and went on to call Weiss' resignation "good news," describing her as "the enforcer of political correctness of liberal orthodoxy" at NPR.