I like Juan Williams a lot, based on his role on Fox News's "The Five." As the oldest member of that show, and the token liberal, he carries the persona of the cranky old leftist, fending off Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld as they pepper him with barbs (in a friendly way--usually) and respond to Williams's defense of his liberal views. In Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate, Williams tells the story of how he ended up as a full-timer at Fox News and bemoans the lack of balance virtually anywhere in American media.
The impetus of the book, and much of its content, involves Williams's firing from NPR. In the days after 9/11, he made a comment that he would be "worried" if a group of men in "Muslim garb" were on a flight with him. For this comment, NPR fired him. Fox News, on which he was a regular commentator, gave him a full-time gig as the resident liberal.
If you have suspected that NPR has a definite leftward slant (it seems obvious, but they try to present themselves as centrist or unbiased), Williams's account will convince you. While Fox is regularly dismissed as non-serious, biased news coverage, the reality is that outlets like NPR and others militantly exclude points of view that don't fit their agendas.
Muzzled was published in 2011, so it doesn't touch on the 2016 election or the Trump administration. Besides his own firing controversy, he covers several policy positions, presenting his mostly predictable liberal positions. Even though I disagree with Williams on most policy issues, I appreciate the reasonableness with which he discusses policy, in the book and on TV. These discussions are pretty standard, but the account of the NPR debacle is worth the time to read the book. We could use more voices like Williams's in public discourse.
No comments:
Post a Comment