A word from Jeff Jacoby

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes with a word on the Juan Williams affair:

Before NPR’s disgraceful treatment of Juan Williams, there was NPR’s disgraceful treatment of Steven Emerson, one of the world’s foremost experts on the threat from Islamist terrorism. In 1998 I learned that NPR — in response to pressure from Islamist extremists — had blackballed Emerson from appearing on its airwaves.
When I broke the story in the Boston Globe, NPR denied that it ever blackballed anyone. Yet Emerson was still being kept off the air three years later — i.e., after 9/11, when everyone could see just how prescient his warnings had been.
In the current uproar over Juan Williams’s firing, I thought it might be good to recall that when it comes to ultra-PC genuflecting to Islamist sensibilities, NPR is a repeat offender.

Interested readers may want to refresh their recollection with Jeff’s column 1998 column on the blacklisting of Steve Emerson and with his 2002 update.

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