News analyst Juan Williams appears on the "Fox & friends" television program in New York, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010. Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights in the U.S., has been fired by National Public Radio after comments he made about Muslims on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," on Monday.
(Credit: Richard Drew) Conservative Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina today announced plans to introduce legislation stripping federal funding from National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
The move comes following the firing of NPR contributor Juan Williams for comments about Muslims.
Williams said among other things that he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on his airplane flights.
The firing prompted calls from Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and others on the right to strip NPR of funding, and now DeMint, who is beloved in the Tea Party movement despite his Senate perch, has taken up the call.
"Once again we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree. The incident with Mr. Williams shows that NPR is not concerned about providing the listening public with an honest debate of today's issues, but rather with promoting a one-sided liberal agenda," he said in a statement.
The release said U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, a California Republican, is putting forth legislation matching DeMint's in the House. He previously put forth such legislation in June. If Republicans take control of the House in the midterm elections they could bring the matter to a vote in the next Congress. (The same is true in the Senate, though a GOP takeover there is less likely.)
NPR and PBS get funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which got a $422 million total allocation from the federal government in FY2010. Much of that money goes to member stations, not NPR or PBS directly, though the member stations pay dues to NPR and PBS.
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