In the wake of the Juan Williams "scandal" the notion of First Amendment rights and free speech have dominated the rhetoric, but nobody has mentioned Williams' own responsibility to uphold journalism's code of ethics. If you haven't heard about the Juan Williams story, you can read about it here. In a nutshell, Williams, and NPR news analyst, appeared on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and said,

"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."

As you can imagine, after witnessing this statement, NPR promptly ushered Williams out the door saying, "His [Williams'] remarks on The O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." Of course in this toxic political environment certain individuals have picked up this story and ran with it to further there own agenda *cough* Sarah Palin *cough*. So here's a few facts about this latest manufactured controversy.

1. This wasn't the first time that Juan Williams' poor choice of words has gotten him into trouble. In early 2009 he referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as having "this Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going." Williams has a history of bad behavior that has seen him get demoted from NPR staff correspondent to contract news analyst. This latest issue was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
2. Since being fired from NPR Juan Williams has accepted a $2 million/yr. contract to be a contributor on Fox News. Before his most recent comments on The O'Reilly Factor, no one knew who Juan Williams was, or more importantly, cared who he was. This reeks of a setup so Williams could leave for greener pastures and conservatives would call NPR the bad guy.
3. NPR is one of the few news organizations left that forces their correspondents and analysts to adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics. This would be the equivalent of your employer forcing you to adhere to their ethics standards and then punishing you for acting like a jackass on a public forum (Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, etc.).
4. Sarah Palin and Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) have set out to end federal funding of NPR. They apparently still think that NPR stands for "National Public Radio" when in practice, the organization has distanced itself from the Public Radio moniker for some time now. As a matter of fact, only about 1% (~$1 million) of NPR's yearly budget is funded directly by taxpayers, meaning Williams gets a bigger paycheck each year from Fox News than NPR gets directly from the federal government.

Now that I've gotten that rant out of the way, let's put all of this in context and examine journalism itself. There once was a time when the news meant something, and you got your news from a trusted journalist such as Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. These journalists adhered to a code of ethics that has since disappeared in the mainstream American media. In this day and age of "infotainment" we expect our "journalists" to entertain us, and we accept the filtered, out-of-context drivel that these "newsmagazines" peddle to us. When Williams and others like him appear on these opinion-based talk shows, they cross the line from journalist to pundit. The suits at NPR realize this, and that is why they don't even want their correspondents attending the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies later this month. It would be one thing if Williams made his statements in private and then was punished for it, but he went on national television and violated what he knew to be his employer's code of ethics. What did he expect would happen? That's enough ranting for one day. You should check out the SPJ's Code of Ethics. It might make you think twice about what you consider "news" and where you get it from.