NPR has fired longtime news analyst Juan Williams, also a commentator on the Fox News Channel, after he told Bill O'Reilly that he gets nervous on an airplane when he sees people in Muslim dress. 
 
 News analyst Juan Williams appears on the "Fox & friends" television program in New York, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010. Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights in the U.S., has been... (Associated Press) 
 
 News analyst Juan Williams appears on the "Fox & friends" television program in New York, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010. Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights in the U.S., has been... (Associated Press) 
 
 News analyst Juan Williams appears on the "Fox & friends" television program in New York, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010. Williams, who has written extensively on race and civil rights in the U.S., has been... (Associated Press) 
 
 In a statement late Wednesday, National Public Radio said it was terminating Williams' contract as a senior news analyst over his comments on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor." 
 
 NPR executives had previously complained about his remarks on Fox and asked him to stop using the NPR name when he appeared on O'Reilly's show. 
 
 The latest comments came Monday, when O'Reilly brought on guests to discuss his own appearance last week on ABC's "The View," during which Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set to protest his views on Muslims. 
 
 "Where am I going wrong here, Juan?" O'Reilly asked. 
 
 Williams, 56, responded that too much political correctness can get in the way of reality. 
 
 "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," Williams said. "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." 
 
 He went on to say that not everyone in a religious group _ Christian or Muslim _ should be lumped together with extremists. 
 
 NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said that controversial opinions should not come from NPR reporters or news analysts and that whatever feelings Williams has about Muslims should be between him and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." 
 
 Speaking Thursday at the Atlanta Press Club, Schiller also said Williams had veered from journalistic ethics several times before Monday's comments. 
 
 Republicans blasted NPR's decision. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News that Congress should investigate NPR for censorship and consider cutting off its public funding. NPR receives federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but it amounts to a small part of its budget. 
 
 "Juan Williams: Going Rogue," former GOP vice presidental candidate Sarah Palin said Thursday in a Twitter message. "NPR should receive NO fed tax dollars if it operates as intolerant, private radio. Mr. President, what say you?" 
 
 Goldberg also defended Williams on "The View" Thursday. "The point he was trying to say is, 'I get nervous,' and that's OK," she said. "Firing him for saying that I think is kind of ridiculous." 
 
 A phone message left for Williams at his home in Washington was not immediately returned Thursday morning, but on Fox News he stood by his remarks and said his statement was not bigoted. 
 
 Williams said he was abruptly fired Wednesday by Ellen Weiss, NPR's vice president for news. He said he told Weiss he meant what he said on the O'Reilly show, but that she told him he had made a bigoted statement and crossed a line. 
 
 "I said, 'You mean I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball-to-eyeball, person-to-person, have a conversation? I've been there more than 10 years," Williams said. He said Weiss responded that "there's nothing you can say that would change my mind." 
 
 Before Williams was fired, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said such commentary from a journalist about other racial, ethnic or religious minority groups should not be tolerated. 
 
 "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," CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said. 
 
 Later Wednesday, NPR issued a statement saying Williams' remarks "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." 
 
 "Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret," NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in an e-mailed statement. 
 
 The discussion began with a chat about O'Reilly's comments on ABC's "The View" opposing a proposed mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York. The imam behind that project issued a statement Thursday, saying some news organizations are perpetuating anti-Islamic sentiments. 
 
 "While I am saddened that Mr. Williams has lost his job with NPR, this episode serves as a reminder that we should be looking for similarities among religions and cultures rather than differences," Imam Feisal Rauf said. "Divisiveness only serves to fuel the downward spiral of hate and misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds." 
 
 Williams' appearances on Fox have been an issue for NPR in the past, including his remarks about Michelle Obama on a 2009 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor." 
 
 "Michelle Obama, you know, she's got this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going. ... her instinct is to start with this blame America, you know, I'm the victim," Williams said, according to an account by NPR's Ombudsman Alicia Shepard. Carmichael was a civil rights activist. 
 
 At the time, Shepard wrote that Williams was the network's biggest "lightning rod," drawing hundreds of complaints. NPR executives then asked Williams to stop using the NPR name when he appears on O'Reilly's show. 
 
 On Monday, he was identified as a Fox News contributor. 
 
 Williams was a longtime reporter, columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Post. He has written extensively on the civil rights movement, including a book on the African-American religious experience and a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. 
 
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 Associated Press Writer Greg Bluestein in Atlanta contributed to this report. ||||| UPDATE: Fox News announced Thursday that it had signed Juan Williams to a new, multi-year contract, which the Los Angeles Times reported was worth $2 million. Among other things, Williams will now write columns for FoxNews.com, the first of which appeared on Thursday afternoon. 
 
 In the column, Williams excoriated NPR and its leadership for the decision to fire him. He said he was let go for "telling the truth" about his feelings of nervousness when he sees people he thinks are clearly Muslim on airplanes. He called his debate with Bill O'Reilly -- where he also told the Fox News host to be careful about painting all Muslims as extremists -- an "honest, sensitive" one "in the best American tradition of a fair, full-throated and honest discourse about the issues of the day." 
 
 Williams said that NPR's move to fire him was a "a chilling assault on free speech" that came about due to "political correctness and ideological orthodoxy" by the "self-righteous ideological, left-wing leadership at NPR." He also recounted the years of tension between him and his bosses at NPR that resulted from his association with Fox. 
 
 Williams concluded by comparing himself to Daniel Schorr, the longtime NPR contributor who found himself on Richard Nixon's enemies list. 
 
 "I can only imagine Dan's revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for ten years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed," he wrote. 
 
 ORIGINAL POST: Juan Williams appeared on Fox News' "Happening Now" Thursday morning to discuss his firing from NPR over his comments about Muslims on Monday's "O'Reilly Factor." (h/t Johnny Dollar.) 
 
 Williams said that he received a message from Ellen Weiss, NPR's senior vice president for news, telling him to call her. When he did, he said, she asked him to clarify his comments that he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on an airplane. 
 
 "I said, 'I said what I meant to say,'" Williams told Fox News, "which is that it is an honest experience that when I'm in an airport and I see people in Muslim garb who identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I do a double take. I have a moment of anxiety or fear given what happened on 9/11. That's just a reality." 
 
 Weiss, he said, told him that he had crossed the line. When he asked what line that was, she said that his statement had been bigoted. Williams said he had pointed out that he had gone on to tell O'Reilly that America had "an obligation to protect the constitutional rights of everyone in the country" and to prevent bigotry, but that "you cannot ignore what happened on 9/11 and you cannot ignore the connection to Islamic radicalism." 
 
 In response, Williams said, Weiss told him that the decision to fire him had already been taken. 
 
 "I said, 'I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball to eyeball, person to person?'" he continued. "She said, 'there's nothing you can say that will change my mind, this has been decided above me and we're terminating your contract.'" 
 
 NPR President Vivian Schiller also spoke out about the firing on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Schiller appeared at the Atlanta Press Club, where she defended the decision, saying that Williams had violated NPR's guidelines barring its analysts from making personal or controversial statements. She also said that he should keep his feelings about Muslims between himself and "his psychiatrist or his publicist." (UPDATE: Schiller apologized for that comment on Thursday afternoon, saying in a statement that "I spoke hastily and I apologize to Juan and others for my thoughtless remark.") 
 
 In addition, Schiller released a statement about the firing to NPR member stations on Thursday. In it, she wrote that "this isn't the first time we have had serious concerns about some of Juan's public comments. Despite many conversations and warnings over the years, Juan has continued to violate this principle." Schiller also wrote that Williams had violated NPR's code of ethics by expressing views that he would not have expressed on NPR. 
 
 "Unfortunately, Juan's comments on Fox violated our standards as well as our values and offended many in doing so," she said. 
 
 Williams will appear on "The O'Reilly Factor" Thursday night to discuss the firing as well.
– Juan Williams says he didn't misspeak when he talked of getting nervous when seeing Muslims in airports, comments that got him fired from NPR. "I said what I meant to say," Williams explained on Fox News today, "which is that it is an honest experience that when I'm in an airport and I see people in Muslim garb who identify themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I do a double take. I have a moment of anxiety or fear given what happened on 9/11. That's just a reality." Williams described how an NPR executive fired him by phone after he told her just that, reports the Huffington Post. "I said, 'I don't even get the chance to come in and we do this eyeball to eyeball, person to person?'" he said. "She said, 'There's nothing you can say that will change my mind, this has been decided above me and we're terminating your contract.'" Separately today, NPR chief Vivian Schiller said Williams should keep his feelings about Muslims between him and "his psychiatrist or his publicist," reports AP. Click here for more.