Firing of Juan Williams for Muslim comments attacked by US rightwingers

The sacking of a Washington public radio broadcaster over remarks about Muslims turned into a political row last night. Juan Williams was fired as a news analyst with National Public Radio, the closest equivalent in the US to the BBC, after saying on the Fox News Channel that Muslims in traditional dress boarding planes made him nervous. NPR issued a statement expressing regret at his departure after so many years' service but said his comments "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." Prominent rightwing figures, from Sarah Palin to radio talkshow host Rush Limbaugh, rushed to his defence and Fox offered him a three-year $2m (£1.3m) contract. Williams, 56, has been a decade-long contributor to NPR, but has also worked elsewhere, including at Rupert Murdoch's Fox. In an echo of the battle in the UK between Rupert Murdoch's Sky and the BBC, conservatives – some of whom were actually paid by Fox as contributors – called on Congress to cut public funding for NPR, even though the station says that only a tiny part of its finances come from the taxpayer. The row began on Monday night when Williams, a guest on Fox's Bill O'Reilly show, said: "I mean, 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 a 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." The national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad, said: "NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats." NPR terminated Williams's contract shortly after he made the comments. Mike Huckabee, a possible Republican presidential candidate, said he would no longer let NPR interview him. Sarah Palin used her Twitter account to say: "Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing you."