The Fallout | Juan Williams | Vivian Schiller | FOX | NPR | Freedom

HopeTracker| Republican Senator Jim DeMint will introduce legislation to cut federal funding from NPR, after CEO Vivian Schiller fired NPR news analyst Juan Williams for his FOX on-air admission that he is nervous flying, when religious-looking Muslims are onboard.

Schiller has apologized for her statement to an audience at the Atlanta Press Club earlier today that Williams should “keep his feelings about Muslims between himself and his psychiatrist or his publicist.”

Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly followed his Fox colleague Mike Huckabee in calling for an end to all funding for NPR (National Public Radio). Presently, government funding represents only two-percent of NPR’s funding, according to Gawker.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also a FOX News contributor, called the Juan Williams firing “an act of total censorship.”

There is a paper-trail history of conflict between Juan Williams’NPR role as a new analyst, and his alleged FOX infringement of restrictions on the journalist’s right to state his or her own opinions as part of the story. (Anne, for example, could never be a news analyst, with her high-opinionated writing.)

NPR has an official ombudsman Alicia Shepherd who has already stated that rather than terminating news analyst Juan Williams’ contract “probably the better thing for NPR to have done is to have said ‘Juan the situation is not working,’ ” via NPR

Williams told Fox News that he was fired Wednesday by Ellen Weiss, NPR’s vice president for news. He said Weiss told him he made a bigoted statement and crossed a line.

“I said, ‘You mean I don’t even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball-to-eyeball, person-to-person, have a conversation? I’ve been there more than 10 years,” Williams said. He said Weiss responded that “there’s nothing you can say that would change my mind.” via FOX News

In short order Juan Williams signed an expanded role $2 million deal with FOX. Support for NPR CEO Vivian Schiller’s handling of the matter is being widely questioned, not only by her own ombudsman, but by other journalists and media executives.

Juan Williams Responds to His Firing from NPR

More reading: NPR President Vivian Schiller Resigns After Another Video Exposé