Posted 9:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Firing Policies: NPR Versus Fox News

Fox News president Roger Ailes hires Two types of progressives or Democrats: 1) Those who have noting nice to say about the Democratic Party (e.g., Tammy Bruce, Pat Caddell, and Zell Miller; remember him and his claim that the Democratic Party was no longer a national party?) or 2) liberals who have no clue. Included in this category are Alan Colmes, Lanny Davis (click here and here), Terry McAuliffe, and Juan Williams.
After National Public Radio fired Williams, he's been taking the role of victim. Two days ago, on Fox News Sunday, he and the other panel members bemoaned NPR's alleged unfairness.

What a sham.

When Rupert Murdoch brought Roger Ailes on as head of Fox News, one of the first things Ailes did was to purge liberals from the staff, not because of anything they did but because of their personally held political beliefs. Former president of Fox News Joe Peyronnin told Al Franken the following things:

I had about forty people working for me and [Roger Ailes] asked some of them if they were liberal or not. There was a litmus test. He was trying to figure out who was liberal or conservative when he came in, and try to get rid of the liberals.

Ailes not only purged liberals form Fox, he has promoted right-wing operatives like Bill Sammon who have engaged in serious acts of journalistic misconduct (Sammon is now Fox News' Washington Managing Editor and a Vice President for the network).

Williams has had a thirteen year gig on Fox News mainly because he's a pushover. In the words of Salon.com's David Talbot: "Fox likes its liberals soft and chewy, the better to eat them, my dear." During his tenure at Fox, had Williams grown a pair (and a brain) and assertively debated the right-wingers, Ailes would have found a way to get rid of him, too.

ADDENDUM: Just How Clueless is Juan Williams? Last Friday, Williams was a guest on Sean Hannity's radio program where he complimented the host on his "integrity."