NPR which has been on the losing end of a battle to explain why they fired longtime commentator Juan Williams claims that it was due to his violation of their ethics policy and not about the First Amendment.

From the New York Times

In a telephone interview Friday, Ms. Schiller defended the decision to dismiss Mr. Williams and said it was not the product of political or financial pressures.

When asked why Mr. Williams was fired, she said:

The reason that we terminated his contract is because of our news ethics guidelines.

The guidelines are based on the same news ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists, and are very similar to that of The New York Times and many other news organizations.

He had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people’s air. I’m not aware of any problem with any things he has said on our air. In each of those instances, we called him on it; we had a discussion; we asked him not to do it again. It happened several times. What happened a few days ago was the latest in a series of incidents.

I can’t characterize that this was better or worse or less egregious or more egregious than any other time. The point is, this was the latest in a series of incidents.

You give people second chances — we’re big believers in that and we do it all the time — but it happened again and again. And so we made the decision at this point that we had to draw the line somewhere.

A reasonable person could say, “Well why didn’t you make the decision last time this time or the time before?” Or, “Why didn’t you wait until the next time?” Fair enough.

We made the decision here because, at a certain point, if someone keeps not following your guidance, you have to make a break. And that’s what we did. And that is the sole reason.

Ms. Schiller added a moment later, “This is not a First Amendment issue. We terminated his contract according to the terms of his contract.”

Many supporters of Mr. Williams have sought to frame his firing as a First Amendment issue.

Asked about that, she reiterated, “This is not a First Amendment issue.”

“We are a news organization that exists to serve the First Amendment,” she said. “The issue, again, was, Juan Williams, on several occasions — with the thing that happened earlier this week being only the most recent — violated our news code of ethics, to which he is beholden as a news analyst. And it happened again and again. And this time, we decided that enough was enough. That is not a First Amendment issue.”

Asked who made the decision to terminate Mr. Williams’s contract, Ms. Schiller said, “I’m the C.E.O., so ultimately the buck stops with me. I’m not trying to pass it on to anyone else. But I’ll tell you, there was no daylight between me and the senior news team at NPR, the top management of news. We all discussed this at length. We don’t take these actions lightly. We didn’t take this action lightly.”

NPR has a double standard.  It’s okay for someone like Nina Totenberg to wish Jesse Helms and his grandchildren would get AIDS or someone else on the network tocall Tea Party activists “teabaggers” but when Williams makes a personal statement about how he feels about Muslims on airplanes he gets the boot.

In reality Williams had become a burr in the saddle of NPR with his frequent appearances on Fox and jumped at the chance to fire him once he crossed the politically incorrect line but speaking about Muslims.

Score this one Williams 1 NPR 0.

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